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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



STORIES OF CALIFORNIA 




Nevada Falls (height G17 feet). 
Yoseiuite Valley. 



STORIES OF CALIFORNIA 



BY 

ELLA M. SEXTON 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1902 

All rights reserved 



THE LIBRARY OF 

CONCUR ES9, 
Two Comes Reocived 

OCT. 23 1902 f 



COPY a 



Copyright, 1902, 

bt the macmillan company. 



Set up and electrotyped September, 1902. 






<^-^ 



Norbjooti i^ctss 

J. 8. Gushing & Co. - Berwick ft Smith 
Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 



FOREWORD 

To recount in simple, accurate narratives the 
early conditions and subsequent development of 
California is the purpose of this book. In at- 
tempting to picture the romantic events em- 
bodied in the wonderful history of the state, and 
to make each sketch clear and concise as well 
as interesting, the author has avoided many dry 
details and dates. 

Several of the stories endeavor to explain the 
remarkable physical characteristics of California. 
The work to this end was rendered lighter by 
the hope that the reader might find the book 
merely an introduction to that larger knowledge 
of personal observation and inquiry. 

But the writer's chief aim has been to interest 
the children of California in the beautiful land 
of their birth, to unfold to them the life and 
occurrences of bygone days, and to lead them to 
note and to enjoy their fortunate surroundings. 

Among the many authorities consulted for the 
work, special acknowledgment is due to the his- 
torians, Theodore H. Hittell and H. H. Bancroft. 



CONTENTS 



California's Name and Early History . 

The Story of the Missions and of Father Serra 

Before the Gringos came 

The Americans and the Bear-flag REruBLic 
The Days of Gold and the Argonauts of '49 

Mining Stories 

How Polly Elliott came across the Plains 

The Building of the Overland Railroad 

Story of the Wheat Fields 

Orchard, Farm, and Vineyard 

The Story of the Navel Orange 

The Lemon .... 

Flowers and Plants 

The Big Trees and Lumbering 

Our Birds .... 

Our Wild Animals. 

In Salt Water and Fresh . 

About California's Indians . 

The Story of San Francisco 

Men California remembers . 

Our Glorious Climate . 

Some Wonderful Sights 



PAGB 
1 

8 
20 
30 
37 
49 
57 
67 
75 
83 
92 



98 
102 
111 
121 
133 
145 
159 
169 
180 
191 
199 



vii 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Nevada Falls (height 617 feet), Yosemite Valley 



Father Junipero Serra 

Mission Church, Monterey . 

Old San Diego Mission. Founded 1769 

Mission San Luis Key. Founded 1798 

Mission Dolores. Established 1776 

Santa Barbara Mission. Founded 1786 

Upper Sacramento River 

Placer Gold Mining. Washing with Cradle 

An Orange Tree with Fruit and Blossoms 

Palms over 100 Years Old at Los Angeles 

Hop Vines .... 

Among the Hop Vines . 

White Santa Barbara Poppy 

Wild California Poppy 

In a Mission Garden 

A Christmas Garden 

" Wawona " (28 feet in diameter) 

The Grizzly Giant (33 feet in diameter) 

Big Trees at Felton, Santa Cruz Co. 



Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

5 



v^ 



12 ' 

12 ^ 

21 

21 

28 - 

37' 

37 

85 

85 ' 

92 , 

92 

101 ^ 
101 
103 
103 
106 ' 
106 
118 



X ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING PAGB 

Young Towhee 133 

Baby Yellow Warblers. From photographs by 

Elizabeth Grinnell 133 ^ 

California Red Deer. From a photograph by George 

V. Robinson 140 

Leaping Tuna 149 

Black Sea Bass 149 

Humpback Whale (57 feet long) 159 

Trout from Lake Tahoe 159 

Indian Woman with Pappoose 162 

Indian Woman with Baskets 162 

Indian Baskets 174 

Seal Rocks, San Francisco 177 

The New Cliff House, San Francisco . . . 177 

Entrance to Japanese Tea Garden, San Francisco 179 

Fallen Leaf Lake 191 

Mount Shasta from Strawberry Valley . . 191 
" El Capitan " (3300 feet in height) . . . .194 

Yosemite Falls 194 

Natural Bridge, Santa Cruz 204 



STORIES OF CALIFOROTA 

CALIFORNIA'S NAME AND EARLY 
HISTORY 

A Spanish story written four hundred years 
ago speaks of California as an island rich 
in pearls and gold. Only black women lived 
there, the story says, and they had golden 
spears, and collars and harness of gold for 
the wild beasts which they had tamed to ride 
upon. This island was said to be at a ten 
days' journey from Mexico, and was supposed 
to He near Asia and the East Indies. 

Among those who believed such fairy tales 
about this wonderful island of California was 
Cortes, a Spanish soldier and traveller. He 
had conquered Mexico in 1521 and had made 
Montezuma, the Mexican emperor, give him a 
fortune in gold and precious stones. Then 
Cortes wished to find another rich country to 



2 CALIFORNIA'S NAME AND EARLY HISTORY 

capture, and California, he thought, would be 
the very place. He wrote home to Spain 
promising to bring back gold from the island, 
and also silks, spices, and diamonds from Asia. 
For he was sure that the two countries were 
near together, and that both might be foimd 
in the Pacific Ocean, or South Sea, as he 
called it, by sailing northwest. 

So for years Cortes built ships in New 
Spain (or Mexico), and sent out men to hunt 
for this golden island. They found the Gulf 
of California, and at last Cortes himself sailed 
up and down its waters. He explored the 
land on both sides, and saw only poor, naked 
Indians who had a few pearls but no gold. 
Cortes never found the golden island. We 
should remember, however, that his ships first 
sailed on the North Pacific and explored Lower 
California, and that he first used the name 
California for the peninsula. 

It was left for a Portuguese ship-captain 
called Cabrillo to find the port of San Diego 



CALIFORNIA'S NAME AND EARLY HISTORY 3 

in 1542. He was the first white man to land 
upon the shores of California, as we know it. 
Afterwards he sailed north to Monterey. Many 
Indians living along the coast came out to his 
ship in canoes with fish and game for the 
white men. Then Cabrillo sailed north past 
Monterey Bay, and almost in sight of the 
Golden Gate. But the weather was rough and 
stormy, and without knowing of the fine harbor 
so near him, he turned his ship round and 
sailed south again. He reached the Santa 
Barbara Islands, intending to spend the winter 
there, but he died soon after his arrival. The 
people of San Diego now honor Cabrillo with 
a festival every year. He was the sea-king 
who found their bay and first set foot on 
California ground. 

About this time Magellan had discovered the 
Philippine Islands, and Spain began to send 
ships from Mexico to those islands to buy 
silks, spices, and other rich treasures. The 
Spanish galleons, or vessels, loaded with their 



4 CALIFORNIA'S NAME AND EARLY HISTORY 

costly freight, used to come home by crossing 
the Pacific to Cape Mendocino, and then saihng 
down the coast of California to Mexico. Be- 
fore long the English, who hated Spain and 
were at war with her, sent out brave sea- 
captains to capture the Spanish galleons and 
their cargoes. Sir Francis Drake, one of the 
boldest Enghshmen, knew this South Sea very 
well, and on a ship called the Golden Hind 
(which meant the Golden Deer), he came to 
the New World and captured every Spanish 
vessel he sighted. He loaded his ship with 
their treasures, gold and silver bars, chests 
of silver money, velvets and silks, and wished 
to take his cargo back to England. He 
tried to find a northern, or shorter way home, 
and at last got so far north that his sailors 
suffered from cold, and his ship was nearly 
lost. Obhged to sail south, he found a 
sheltered harbor near Point Reyes, and landed 
there in 1579. Drake claimed the new country 
for the English Queen, Elizabeth, and named it 




Father Jujsipero Sekra 



CALIFORNIA'S NAME AND EARLY HISTORY 5 

New Albion. A great many friendly Indians 
in the neighborhood brought presents of feather 
and bead work to the commander and his men. 
These Indians killed small game and deer with 
bows and arrows, and had coats or mantles of 
squirrel skins. 

Drake and his sailors repaired and refitted 
their vessel during the month they stayed at 
Drake's Bay. They made several trips inland 
also and saw the pine and redwood forests 
with many deer feeding on the hills ; but they 
did not discover San Francisco Bay. On leav- 
ing New Albion, Drake sailed the Golden Hind 
across the Pacific to the East Indies and the 
Indian Ocean, and round the Cape of Good 
Hope home to England, with all the treasure 
he had taken. The queen received him with 
great honors and his ship was kept a hundred 
years in memory of the brave admiral, who 
had commanded it on this voyage. 

During the next century several English 
commanders of vessels sailed the South Sea 



6 CALIFORNIA'S NAME AND EARLY HISTORY 

while hunting Spanish galleons to capture, and 
these ships often touched at Lower California 
for fresh water. Some of the captains explored 
the coast and traded with the Indians, but no 
settlements were made. 

Then the Spanish tried to find and settle the 
country they had heard so many reports of, 
thinking to provide stations where their trad- 
ing ships might anchor for supplies and pro- 
tection. Viscaino, on his second voyage for 
this purpose, landed at San Diego in 1602. 
Sailing on to the island he named Santa 
Catalina, Viscaino found there a tribe of fine- 
looking Indians who had large houses and 
canoes. They were good hunters and fisher- 
men and clothed themselves in sealskins. 
Viscaino went on to Monterey and finally as 
far north as Oregon, but owing to severe 
storms, and to sickness among his sailors, he 
was obliged to return to Mexico. 

For a long time after this failure to settle 
upon the coast, the Spanish came to Lower 



CALIFORNIA'S NAME AND EARLY HISTORY 7 

California for the pearl-fisheries. Along the 
Gulf of California were many oyster-beds where 
the Indians secured the shells by diving for 
them. Large and valuable pearls were found 
in many of the oysters, and the Spanish 
collected them in great quantities from the 
Indians who did not know their real value. 

In this peninsula of Lower California fifteen 
Missions, or settlements, each having a church, 
were founded by Padres of the Jesuits. But 
later the Jesuits were ordered out of the 
country, and their Missions turned over to the 
Franciscan order of Mexico. 

With the coming of the Franciscans a new 
period of California's history began. Spain 
wished to settle Alta California, or that region 
north of the peninsula, and Father Serra, the 
head and leader of these Franciscans, was 
chosen to begin this work. 

How he did this, and how he and his 
followers founded the California Missions you 
will read in the story of that time. 



THE STORY OF THE MISSIONS AND OF 
FATHER SERRA 

The old Missions of California are landmarks 
that remind us of Father Serra and his band 
of faithful workers. There were twenty-one 
of their beautiful churches, and though some 
are ruined and neglected, others lilsie the Mis- 
sion Dolores of San Francisco and the Santa 
Barbara and Monterey buildings are still in 
excellent condition. From San Diego to San 
Francisco these Missions were located, about 
thirty miles apart, and so well were the sites 
chosen that the finest cities of the state have 
grown roimd the old churches. 

Father Junipero Serra was the president and 
leader of the Franciscan missionaries and the 
founder of the Missions. He had been brought 
up in Spain, and had dreamed from his boy- 



STORY OF THE MISSIONS AND FATHER SERRA 9 

hood of going to the New World, as the 
Spanish called America, to tell the savages 
how to be Christians. He began his work as 
a missionary in Mexico and there labored 
faithfully among the Indians for nearly 
twenty years. But as his greatest wish was 
to preach to those in unknown places he was 
glad to be chosen to explore Alta or Upper 
California. 

Marching by land from Loreto, a Mission 
of Lower California, Father Serra, with Gov- 
ernor Portola and his soldiers, reached San 
Diego in 1769. Here he planted the first 
Mission on California ground. The church was 
a rude arbor of boughs, and the bells were hung 
in an oak tree. Father Serra rang the bells 
himself, and called loudly to the wondering 
Indians to come to the Holy Church and hear 
about Christ. But the natives w^ere suspicious 
and not ready to listen to the good man's teach- 
ings, and several times they attacked the new- 
comers. Finally, after six years, they burnt the 



10 STORY OF THE MISSIONS AND FATHER SERRA 

church and killed one of the missionaries. But 
later on there was peace^ and the priests, or 
Padres as they were called, taught the Indians 
to raise corn and wheat, and to plant olive 
orchards and ^g trees, and grapes for wine. 
They built a new church and round it the huts, 
or cabins, of the Indians, the storehouses, and 
the Padre's dwelling. In the early morning the 
bells called every member of the Mission family 
to a church service. After a breakfast of corn 
and beans they spent the morning in outdoor 
work or in building. At noon either mutton 
or beef was served with corn and beans, and 
at two o'clock work began again, to last till 
evening service. A supper of corn-meal mush 
was the Indians' favorite meal. They had 
many holidays, when their amusements were 
dancing, bull-fighting, or cock-fighting. 

San Diego, called the Mother Mission, because 
it is the oldest church, is now also most in ruins. 
But its friends hope to put new foundations 
under the old walls, and to recap firm ones with 



STORY OF THE MISSIONS AND FATHER SERRA 11 

cement, and preserve this monument of early 
California history. 

After Father Serra had started the San Diego 
settlement he set sail for Monterey. Landing at 
Monterey Bay, he built an altar under a large 
oak tree, hung the Mission bells upon the 
boughs, and held the usual services. The Span- 
ish soldiers fired off their guns in honor of 
the day and put up a great cross. The Indians 
had never heard the somid of guns and were so 
frightened that they ran away to the moun- 
tains. The second Mission was built on the 
Carmel River, a little distance from the site of 
the first altar. This was called San Carlos of 
Monterey, and the settlement was the capital 
of Alta Cahfornia for many years. It was also 
the Mission that Father Serra loved the best, and 
after every trip to other and newer settlements 
he returned to San Carlos as his home. This 
Monterey Mission is well preserved, and books, 
carved church furniture, and embroidered robes 
used in the old services are still shown. 



12 STORY OF THE MISSIONS AND FATHER SERRA 

At both San Diego and Monterey a presidio, 
or fort, was built for the soldiers. These forts 
had one or two cannon brought from Spain, and 
had around them high walls, or stockades, to 
protect, if it should be necessary, the Mission 
people from the Indians. The cannon were fired 
on holidays, or to frighten troublesome Indians. 

All the Mission buildings were of brown clay 
made into large bricks about a foot and a half 
long and broad, and three or four inches thick. 
These bricks, dried in the sun, were called 
adobes, and were plastered together and made 
smooth by a mortar of the same clay. Then 
the walls were coated outside and inside with a 
lime stucco and whitewashed. The roof timbers 
were covered with hollow red tiles, each like the 
half of a sewer pipe, and these were laid to over- 
lap each other so that they kept the rain out. 
The floors were of earth beaten hard, and the 
windows had bars or latticework, but no glass. 
The large church was snowy white within and 
without and had pictures brought from Spain 







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Old Sax Diego ^Mission. 
Foiuuled 17(39. 



STORY OF THE MISSIONS AND FATHER SERRA 13 

and much carved furniture, such as chairs, 
benches, and the pulpit made by the Indians. 
One or two round-topped towers and five or six 
belfries, each holding a large bell, were on the 
church roof, and a great iron cross at the very top. 
Night and morning the Mission bells rang to 
call the Indians to mass or service, and chimes 
or tunes were rung on holidays or for weddings. 
These Mission bells were brought from Spain, 
and it was thought a blessing rested on the 
ship which carried them, and that shipwreck 
could not come to such a vessel. We read of 
one captain joyfully receiving the Mission bells 
to take to San Diego. When nearing the coast 
his vessel struck a rock, yet passed on in safety 
because, as he said, no harm could happen with 
the bells on board. On his journeys every 
missionary carried a bell with him for the new 
church he was to build. Father Serra's first act 
on reaching a stopping-place was to hang the 
bell in a tree and ring it to gather the Indians 
and people for service. 



14 STORY OF THE MISSIONS AND FATHER SERRA 

San Antonio, a very successful Mission, 
was the third one established, and it was in a 
beautiful little valley of the Santa Lucia 
Mountains. Every kind of fruit grew in its 
orchards, and the Indians there were very happy 
and contented, and in large workshops made 
cloth, saddles, and other things. San Gabriel, 
not far from Los Angeles and sometimes called 
the finest church of all, was the next to be 
built. This was the richest of the Missions 
and had great stores of wool, wheat, and 
fruit, which the hard-working Indians earned 
and gave to the church. The Indians, indeed, 
were almost slaves, and worked all their lives 
for the Padres without rest or pay. At San 
Gabriel the first California flour-mill worked 
by a stream of water turning the wheel, was 
put up. Some of the old palms and olive trees 
are still growing there. 

San Juan Capistrano, founded in 1776, was 
one of the best-known Missions, for it had a 
seaport of its own at San Juan. Vessels came 



STORY OF THE MISSIONS AND FATHER SERRA 15 

to its port for the hides and tallow of thousands 
of cattle herded round the Mission. The first 
fine church of this Mission was destroyed by an 
earthquake, and many people were killed by its 
falling roof. It was rebuilt, however, and still 
shows its fine front, and long corridors or 
porches round a hollow square where a garden 
and fountain used to be. 

Old records tell us that Father Serra felt 
that there should be a church named in honor 
of Francis, who was the founder and patron 
saint of the Franciscan brotherhood of monks 
to which these missionaries belonged. When 
Father Serra spoke of this to Galvez, that 
priest replied, "If our good Saint Francis 
wants a Mission, let him show us that fine 
harbor up above Monterey and we will build 
him one there." Several explorers had failed to 
find this port about which Indians had spoken 
to the Spanish. At last Ortega discovered it, 
and Father Palou, in 1776, consecrated the 
Mission of San Francisco. Near the spot 



16 STORY OF THE MISSIONS AND FATHER SERRA 

was a small lake called the '' Laguna de los 
Dolores," and from this the church was at 
last known as the Mission Dolores. But the 
great city bears the Spanish name of Saint 
Francis, or San Francisco. A fort was erected 
where the present Presidio stands, and later a 
battery of cannon was placed at Black Point. 
It is told that the Indians were very quarrel- 
some here and fought so among themselves 
that the Padres could get no church built for 
a year. In that part of San Francisco called 
the Mission, the old building with its odd roof 
and three of the ancient bells is a very inter- 
esting place to visit. There are pictures, and 
other relics of the past to see, and in the 
graveyard many of San Francisco's early set- 
tlers were buried. This was the sixth Mission 
of Alta California. 

The Santa Barbara Mission, where Francis- 
can fathers still live, has a fine church with 
double towers and a long row of two-story 
adobe buildings enclosing a hollow square 



STORY OF THE MISSIONS AND FATHER SERRA 17 

where a beautiful garden is kept. One of the 
brotherhood, wearing a long brown robe just 
as Father Serra did, takes visitors into the 
church, and also shows them the garden and 
a large carved stone fountain. This church 
is built of sandstone with two large towers 
and a chime of six bells, and was finished 
in 1820. 

The Santa Ynez Mission was much damaged 
by the heavy earthquake that in 1812 ruined 
other Missions. Here the Indians raised large 
crops of wheat and herded many cattle. Over 
a thousand Indians, it is said, attacked this 
church in 1822, but the priest in charge 
frightened them away by firing guns. This 
warlike conduct so displeased the Padres, who 
wished the natives ruled by kindness, that 
the poor priest was sent away from the 
Mission. 

One of the early Missions was San Luis 
Obispo, where services are still held. It was 
specially noted for a fine blue cloth woven 



18 STORY OY THE MISSIONS AND FATHER SERRA 

by the Indians from the wool of the Mission 
flocks of sheep. The Indians there also wove 
blankets, and cloth from cotton raised upon 
their own lands. 

San Juan Bautista, or St. John the Baptist, 
north of Monterey, had a splendid chime of 
nine bells said to have been brought from 
Peru and to have very rich, mellow tones. 
San Miguel had> a bell hung up on a plat- 
form in front of the church, and now at Santa 
Ysabel, sixty miles from San Diego, where the 
Mission itself is only a heap of adobe ruins, 
two bells hang on a rude framework of logs. 
The Indian bell-ringer rings them by a rope 
fastened to each clapper. The bells were cast 
in Spain and much silver jewellery and house- 
hold plate were melted with the bell-metal. 
Near them the Diegueno Indians worship in a 
rude arbor of green boughs with their priest. 
Father Antonio, who has worked for thirty 
years among the tribe. They live on a 
rancheria near by and are making adobe 



STORY OF THE MISSIONS AND FATHER SERRA 19 

bricks, hoping soon to build a church like the 
old Mission long since crumbled away. 

The last of the Missions was built in 1823 
at Sonoma, and proved very active in church 
work, some fifteen hundred Indians having 
been there baptized. 

Father Junipero Serra died at more than 
seventy years of age, at San Carlos. During 
all his Hfe in America he endured great hard- 
ships and suffering to bring the gospel to the 
heathen as he had dreamed of doing in his 
boyish days. A monument to his memory 
has been erected at Monterey by Mrs. Stan- 
ford, but the Missions he founded are his best 
and most lasting remembrances. 



BEFORE THE GRINGOS CAME 

This is the story Senora Sanchez told us 
children as we sat on the sunny, rose-covered 
porch of her old adobe house at Monterey one 
summer afternoon. And as she talked of 
those early times she worked at her fine linen 
"drawn-work" with bright, dark eyes that 
needed no glasses for all her eighty years 
and snow-white hair. 

" When I was a girl, California was a Mex- 
ican republic," said the Senora, " and Los 
Gringos, as we called the Americans, came 
in ships from Boston. They brought us our 
shoes and dresses, our blankets and groceries; 
all kinds of goods, indeed, to trade for hides 
and tallow, which was all our people had to 
sell in those days. For no one raised any- 
thing but cattle then, and all summer long 

20 




Missiox San Luis Rey. 
Founded 1798. 




Missiox Dolores. 
■^ Established 1776. 



BEFORE THE GRINGOS CAME 21 

the cows cropped the rich clover and wild 
oats till they were fat and ready to kill. 
In the fall the Indians and vaqueros, or cow- 
boys as you children call them, drove great 
herds of cattle to the Missions near the ocean 
where the Gringos came with their ship-loads 
of fine things and waited for trading-days. 

" For weeks every one worked hard, killing 
the cattle, stripping off their skins and hang- 
ing the green or fresh hides over poles to dry 
in the sun. When dried hard and stiff as 
a board the skins were folded hair-side in, 
and were then worth about two dollars apiece. 
The beef-suet, or fat, from these cattle was 
put mto large iron kettles and melted. While 
still hot it was dipped out with wooden dip- 
pers into rawhide bags, each made from an 
animal's skin. When cold and hard these 
bags of tallow were sewed up with leather 
strings, and thus they were taken to Boston. 

" So much beef was on hand at such times 
that not even the hungry Indians could eat 



22 BEFORE THE GRINGOS CAME 

it all while it was fresh. The nicest pieces 
were cut into long strips, dipped into a boil- 
ing salt brine full of hot red peppers and hung 
up to dry where the sunshine soon turned 
the meat into carne seca, or dried beef. We 
put it away in sacks, and very good it was 
all the year for stews, and to eat with the 
frijoles, or red beans, and tortillas, which were 
corn-cakes. 

"All we bought from the Gringos was paid 
for with hides and tallow, so it was well, you 
see, children, that my father owned ten thou- 
sand cattle; for counting relatives and Indian 
servants, we always had more than thirty 
people on our ranch to feed and clothe. We 
raised grain and corn and beans enough for 
the family, but had to buy sugar, co:ffee, and 
such things. 

"Did we have many horses, you say? Yes, 
droves of them, and we almost lived on horse- 
back, for no one walked if he could help it, 
and there were almost no carriages or roads. 



BEFORE THE GRINGOS CAME 23 

Neither were tliere any barns or stables, for 
the mustangs, or tough little ponies, fed on 
the wild grass and took care of themselves. 
Every morning a horse was caught, saddled 
and bridled, and tied by the door ready to use. 
All the ladies rode, too, and I often used to 
ride twenty miles to a dance with Juan, my 
young husband, and back again in a day or 
so. 

"Sometimes we went to the rodeo, where 
once a year the great herds of cattle were 
driven into corrals, and each ranchero or 
farmer picked out his own stock. Then those 
young calves or yearlings not already marked 
were branded with their owner's stamp by a 
red-hot iron that burnt the mark into the 
skin. After that the bellowing, frightened 
animals were turned out to roam the grassy 
plains for another year. We had plenty of 
feasting and merry-making at these rodeos, 
and a whole ox was roasted every day for the 
hungry crowds, so no one went fasting to bed. 



24 BEFORE THE GRINGOS CAME 

" Those were gay times, my children," and 
Senora Sanchez sighed and sewed quietly for 
a while till Harry asked her if they kept 
Christmas before the Gringos came. 

" Yes, indeed," she said, laughing, " we kept 
Christmas for a week, and all our friends and 
relatives were welcome, so that our big ranch- 
house was full of company. Indeed, some of 
the visitors slept in hammocks or rolled up in 
blankets on the verandas. Our house was 
built round the four sides of a square garden, 
with wide porches, where we sat on pleasant 
days. There was a fountain in this garden, 
and orange trees, which at Christmas-time 
hung full of golden fruit and sweet white 
flowers. On ' the holy night,' as we called 
Christmas Eve, we hung lanterns in the porches, 
and everybody crowded there or in the garden 
for their gifts. 

"No, we had no Santa Claus nor Christmas 
tree, but my father gave presents to all, even 
to the Indian servants and their children. 



BEFORE THE GRINGOS CAME 25 

A fan or a string of pearls, perhaps, for my sis- 
ters, the young senoritas ; a fine saddle or a 
velvet jacket for my brother; and red blank- 
ets or gay handkerchiefs for the Indians, 
with sacks of beans or sweet potatoes to eat 
with their Christmas feast of roast ox or a 
fat sheep. Afterwards we danced till morn- 
ing came, or sang to the sweet tinkle of the 
guitars. Well do I remember, children, when 
the good Padres, or priests, at the Mission 
forbade us to waltz, that new dance the Grin- 
gos had taught us to like. I recall, also, 
that the governor only laughed and said that 
the young folks could waltz if they wished. 
So at my wedding, soon after, when we 
danced from Tuesday noon till Thursday 
morning, you may be sure we had many a 
waltz. 

" Pretty dresses, Edith ? Y^, gay, bright 
silk or satin ones, with many ruffles on the 
skirts and wide collars and sleeves of lace. 
Red or yellow satin slippers and always a 



26 BEFORE THE GRINGOS CAME 

high comb of silver or tortoise-shell and a 
spangled fan. And we had long gold and 
coral earrings and strings of pearls from the 
Gulf, and, see ! " as she pulled aside her neck- 
scarf, " here is the necklace of gold beads 
that was my wedding gift. We had no hats 
or bonnets, but wore black lace shawls, or 
mantillas, to church, or twisted long silk scarfs 
over our heads to go riding. 

"You will think the gentlemen were fine 
dandies in those Mexican days, when I tell 
you that they often wore crimson velvet knee 
trousers trimmed with gold lace, embroidered 
white shirts, bright green cloth or velvet 
jackets with rows and rows of silver buttons, 
. and red sashes with long, streaming ends. 
Their wide-brimmed sombrero hats were 
trimmed with silver or gold braid and tas- 
sels. They dressed up their horses with beau- 
tiful saddles and bridles of carved leather 
worked all over with gold or silver thread 
and gay with silver rosettes or buttons. Each 



BEFORE THE GRINGOS CAME 27 

gentleman wore a large Spanish, cloak of rich 
velvet or embroidered cloth, and if it rained, 
he threw over his fine clothes a serape, or 
square woollen blanket with a slit cut in the 
middle for the head. 

^^Los Gringos used to laugh at the Mexican 
and his cloak, and not long after they came 
the ' Greasers,' as the Americans called the 
young men born here in California, began to 
wear the ugly clothes the Gringos brought 
out from Boston. And so the times changed, 
children, and our people learned to do every- 
thing as the Americans did it and to work 
hard and save money instead of dancing and 
idling away the time. 

"And the bull-fights, Harry? Oh, yes, 
there was a bull-fight every Sunday afternoon, 
and everybody went, as you do to the foot- 
ball games. The ladies clapped their hands if 
the sport was good, or if the bull was killed 
by the brave swordsman. And if the men got 
hurt or the horses, — well, we only thought 



28 BEFORE THE GRINGOS CAME 

that was part of the game, you see. El toro, 
as we called the bull, always tried to save 
himself; and if he was savage and cruel, that 
was his nature, to try to kill his enemies. 
The gay dresses and the music was what I 
cared for, and then all my friends were there, 
also. 

" But you must be tired of my old stories ; 
is it not so, my children? No, you want to 
hear about the dances, you say? Well, every 
party was a dance ; a fandango or ball, if it 
was given in a hall where everybody could 
come, but at houses where just the people 
came who were invited we called it only a 
dance. Every old grandfather or little girl, 
even, danced all night long, and the rooms 
were hung with flags and wreaths. All the 
Spanish dances were pretty, and the ladies 
with their gay dresses and mantillas, and the 
gentlemen in velvet suits trimmed with gold, 
made a fine picture. At the cascarone, or 
egg-shell dance, baskets of egg-shells filled with 



BEFORE THE GRINGOS CAME 29 

cologne or finely cut tinsel or colored papers 
were brought into the room, and the game 
was to crush these shells over the dancers' 
heads. If your hair got wet with cologne or 
full of gilt paper, everybody laughed, and you 
laughed too, for that was the game, you 
know. Ah, there was plenty of merry-making 
and feasting in those days, children," and 
Senora Sanchez sighed again and went on 
with her "drawn-work," while the bell in the 
old Mission church near by rang five o'clock, 
and we children ran home talking of those 
old times before the Gringos came to California. 



THE AMERICANS AND THE BEAR- 
FLAG REPUBLIC 

While Spain owned Mexico and the two 
Californias, the Missions were at their best 
and grew rich in stores of grain and in cat- 
tle and horses. Almost all the people were 
Spanish or Indians, and they lived at the 
Missions or in ranches near by. But when 
Mexico in 1822 refused to be ruled by Spain, 
Alta or Upper California became a Mexican 
territory, and, later on, a republic with gov- 
ernors sent from Mexico. The Mission Padres 
did not like the change, and thought that 
Spain should still own the New World. Before 
long it was ordered that the Missions should 
be turned into pueblos, or towns, and that the 
Padres were no longer to make slaves of the 

Indians. The missionaries were to stay as 

30 



AMERICANS AND THE BEAR-FLAG REPUBLIC 31 

priests, and to teach the Indians in schools, but 
the Mission lands were to be divided so that 
each Indian family might have a small farm 
to cultivate. From that time the Missions 
began to decay and were finally given up to 
ruin. 

Then Americans began to come in, the first 
party of hunters and trappers travelling from 
Salt Lake City to the San Gabriel Mission. 
All kept talking of the rich country where 
farming was so easy, and they wished to have 
land. But the Mexicans and the native Cali- 
fornians did not believe in allowing the Ameri- 
cans, as they called all the people from the 
Eastern states, to take up their farming lands 
and hunt and trap the wild animals. So there 
was much quarrelling. But the Americans still 
poured in, got land grants, and built houses. 

In 1836, though Alta California declared 
itself a free state, and no longer looked to 
Mexico for support, Mexican rule still con- 
tinued. The United States had wanted Cali- 



32 AMERICANS AND THE BEAR-FLAG REPUBLIC 

fornia for a long time, and had tried to buy 
it from Mexico. The fine bay and harbor of 
San Francisco, known to be the best along 
the coast, was especially needed by the United 
States as a place to shelter or repair ships 
on their way to the Oregon settlements. 
England also wanted this bay, but the 
Californians tried to keep every one out of 
their country. 

Among the Americans who came overland 
and across the Rocky Mountains about this 
time was John C. Fremont, a surveyor and 
engineer, who was called the " Pathfinder." 
On his third trip to the Pacific Coast in 
'46 he wished to spend the winter near Mon- 
terey, with his sixty hunters and mountaineers. 
Castro, the Mexican general, ordered him to 
leave the country at once, but Fremont an- 
swered by raising the American flag over 
his camp. As Castro had more men, Fre- 
mont did not think it wise to fight, but 
marched away, intending to go north to Ore- 



AMERICANS AND THE BEAK-FLAG REPUBLIC 33 

gon. He turned back in tlie Klamath country 
on account of snow and Indians, as lie said, 
and camped where the Feather River joins 
the Sacramento. It is almost certain that 
Fremont wished to provoke Castro and the 
Californians into war, and so to capture the 
country for the United States. 

A party of Fremont's men rode down to 
Sonoma, where there was a Mission, and also 
a presidio with a few cannon in charge of Gen- 
eral Vallejo. These men captured the place 
and sent Vallejo and three other prisoners back 
to Fremont's camp. Then the independent 
Americans concluded to have a new republic 
of their own, and a flag also. So they made 
the famous "Bear-flag" of white cloth, with 
a strip of red flannel sewed on the lower edge, 
and on the white they painted in red a large 
star and a grizzly bear, and also the words 
"California Republic." They then raised the 
flag over the Bear-flag Republic. Many Ameri- 
cans joined their party, but when the American 



34 AMERICANS AND THE BEAR-FLAG REPUBLIC 

flag went up at Monterey, the stars and stripes 
replaced the bear-flag. 

At this time the United States and Mexico 
were at war on account of Texas, and Commo- 
dore Sloat was in charge of the warships on 
the Pacific Coast. The commodore had been 
told to take Alta California, if possible ; so, 
sailing to Monterey, he raised the stars and 
stripes there in July, 1846, and ended Mexican 
power forever. The American flag flew at the 
San Francisco Presidio two days later, and also 
at Sonoma, Sutter's Fort, or wherever there were 
Americans. The flag was greeted with cheers 
and delight. Then Commodore Sloat turned 
the naval force over to Stockton and returned 
home, leaving all quiet north of Santa Barbara. 

Commodore Stockton sent Fremont and his 
men to San Diego and, taking four hundred 
soldiers, went himself to Los Angeles, where 
the native Californians and Mexicans were 
determined to fight against the rule of the 
Uliited States. General Castro and his men 



AMERICANS AND THE BEAR-FLAG REPUBLIC 35 

and Governor Pico, the last of the Mexican 
governors, were driven out of the country. 
Stockton then declared that Upper and Lower 
California were to be known as the " Territory 
of California." 

In less than a month, however, the Cali- 
fornians in the south gathered their forces again 
and took Los Angeles. General Kearny was 
sent out with what was called the " army of 
the west," to assist Fremont and Stockton in 
settling the trouble. Peace was declared after 
several battles, and Kearny acted as governor 
cf the new territory, displacing Fremont. At 
last, by the treaty which closed the Mexican 
war in 1848 Alta California became the prop- 
erty of the United States, and Lower California 
was left to Mexico. 

From that time there was peace and quiet, 
and before long the discovery of gold brought 
the new territory into great importance. The 
rush to the gold mines brought thousands of 
men, and as no government had been provided 



36 AMERICANS AND THE BEAR-FLAG REPUBLIC 

for the territory, Governor Riley in '49 called 
a convention to form a plan of government. 

This Constitutional Convention of delegates 
from each of California's towns met in Monte- 
rey. The constitution there drawn up lasted 
for thirty years, and under it our great state 
was built up. It declared that no slavery 
should ever be allowed here, and settled the 
present eastern boundary line. 

The first Thanksgiving Day for the territory 
was set by Governor Riley, in '49. The first 
governor elected by California voters was Bur- 
nett, and in the first legislature Fremont and 
Gwin were chosen as senators. Congress at 
last admitted California into the Union by 
passing the California bill. On September 9, 
1850, President Fillmore signed the bill. 

Every year on the 9th of September, or 
" Admission Day," we therefore keep our state's 
birthday. At San Jose, in '99, a Jubilee Day 
was held in remembrance of the beginning of 
state government fifty years before. 




Upper Sackamento River. 




Placer Gold Mining. 

(Washing with Cradle.) 



THE DAYS OF GOLD AND THE ARGO- 
NAUTS OF 1849 

California has well earned her name of 
"Golden State/' for from her rich mines gold 
to the value of thirteen hundred millions has 
been taken. Yet every year she adds seven- 
teen millions more to the world's stock of 
gold. No country has produced more of this 
precious yellow metal that men work and 
fight and die for. The ^^gold belt" of the 
state still holds great wealth for miners to 
find in years to come. 

Long, long ago people knew that gold was 
here, for in 1510 a Spanish novel speaks of 
" that island of California where a great abun- 
dance of gold and precious stones is found." 
In 1841 the Indians near San Fernando Mis- 
sion washed out gold from the river-sands, and 

37 



38 DAYS OF GOLD AND THE ARGONAUTS OF 1849 

other mines were found not far from Los 
Angeles. 

But James W. Marshall was the man who 
started the great excitement of '48 and '49 by 
finding small pieces of gold at a place now 
called Coloma, on the American River. Mar- 
shall, who was born in New Jersey, came to 
this state in 1847, and being a builder wished 
to put up houses, sawmills, and flour-mills. 
Finding that lumber was very dear, he de- 
cided to build a sawmill to cut up the great 
trees on the river-bank. He had no money, 
but John A. Sutter, knowing a mill was 
needed there, gave Marshall enough to start 
with. 

So the mill was built, and when it was 
ready to run Marshall found that the mill- 
race, or ditch for carrying the water to his 
mill-wheel, was not deep enough. He turned a 
strong current of water into it, and this ran all 
night. Then it was shut off, and next day 
the ditch showed where the stream had washed 



DAYS OF GOLD AND THE ARGONAUTS OF 1849 39 

it deeper and had left a heap of sand and 
gravel at the end of it. Here Marshall saw 
some shining little stones, and picking them 
up he laid one on a rock and hammered it 
with another till he saw how quickly it 
changed its shape. He was sure that these 
bright, heavy, easily hammered pebbles were 
gold, but the men working about the mill 
would not believe it. So he went to Sutter, 
who lived near at a place called Sutter's Fort, 
because his stores, house, and other buildings 
were built around a hollow square with high 
walls outside to keep off the Indians. Sutter 
weighed the little yellow lumps and said they 
certainly were gold. 

The flood-gates between the mill-race and 
the river were opened again, and water ran 
through the ditch, washing, more gold in 
sight. Sutter picked up enough of this to 
make a ring and had these words marked 
on it: — 

" The first gold found in California, January, 1848." 



40 DAYS OF GOLD AND THE ARGONAUTS OF 1849 

Both Sutter and Marshall tried to keep what 
they had found a secret^ but that was impos- 
sible, and soon people were flocking to the 
gold-fields. Then began a wild excitement 
known as the " gold-fever/' and men left 
their stores and houses, gave up business, and 
left crops ungathered in a wild chase after 
nuggets of gold. 

By December of 1848, thousands of miners 
were washing for gold all along the foot-hills 
from the Tuolumne River to the Feather, a 
distance of 150 miles. A hundred thousand 
men came to California during 1849, these 
Argonauts, or gold-hunters, taking ship or 
steamer for the long trip from New York by 
the Isthmus of Panama. Some went round 
Cape Horn, or else made a weary journey 
overland across the plains. " To the land of 
gold " was their motto, and these pioneers en- 
dured every hardship to reach this " Golden 
State." 

Then the miners, with pick, shovel, and pan 



DAYS OF GOLD AND THE ARGONAUTS OF 1849 41 

for washing out gold from the gravel it was 
found in, started out "prospecting" for "pay- 
dirt." The gold-diggings were usually along 
the rivers, and this surface, or "' placer," mining 
was done by shovelling the "pay-dirt" into a 
pan or a wooden box called a cradle, and rock- 
ing or shaking this box from side to side while 
pouring water over the earth. The heavy 
gold, either in fine scales or dust, or in lumps 
called nuggets, dropped to the bottom, while 
the loose earth ran out in a muddy stream. 
The rich sand left in pan or cradle was care- 
fully washed again and again till only precious, 
shining gold remained. 

So rich were some of the sand bars along 
the American and Feather rivers that the 
first miners made a thousand dollars a day 
even by this careless way of washing gold 
where much of it was lost. Then again for 
days or weeks the miner found nothing at 
all. He would wander up and down the 
canons and gulches, prospecting for another 



42 DAYS OF GOLD AND THE ARGONAUTS OF 1849 

claim, and dreaming day and night of find- 
ing a stream with golden sands, or of picking 
up rich nnggets. If he fomid good "dig- 
gings" he would build a rough shanty under 
the pines, and dig and wash till the gold- 
bearing sand or gravel gave out again. Some- 
times he had a partner and a donkey, or 
burro, to carry tools and pack supplies. More 
often the Argonaut cooked his own bacon and 
slapjacks and simmered his beans over a 
lonely camp-fire, and slept wrapped in a 
blanket under the trees. If he had much 
gold, he would go to the nearest town, buy 
food enough for another prospecting tramp, 
and often spend all the rest of his money in 
foolish waste. 

Sometimes a company of miners would build 
a dam across a river or stream, and turn it 
from its course, so they could dig out and 
wash the rich gravel in the river-bed. A 
flume, or ditch, would often carry all the 
water to a lower part of the river, leaving 



DAYS OF GOLD AND THE ARGONAUTS OF 1849 43 

the bed of the upper stream dry for miles. 
In this kind of mining the " pay-dirt " was 
shovelled into long wooden boxes called sluices, 
and a constant stream of water kept the 
gravel and earth moving on out to a dump- 
ing-place. The gold dropped down or settled 
into riffles, or spaces between bars placed across 
the bottom of the sluices, and once a week 
the water was turned off and a " clean-up " 
made of the gold. 

It was not long before the rivers, creeks, and 
gulches had all been worked over and most of 
the gold taken out. The miners knew that 
this loose gold had been washed out of the 
hills by the rains and storms of countless 
years. So some one thought of using a heavy 
stream of water to break down the foot-hills 
themselves and to carry the gold-bearing gravel 
to sluice boxes. This is called hydraulic min- 
ing and is the cheapest way of handling earth, 
as water does all the work and very little 
shovelling is needed. But since a strong water- 



44 DAYS OF GOLD AND THE ARGONAUTS OF 1849 

power is necessary, a large reservoir and miles 
of ditches or wooden flumes must be built, so 
the first expense is large. The water usually 
comes from higher up in the mountains, and 
is forced under great pressure through iron 
pipes, the nozzle or " giant " being directed 
at the hillside, which has already been shat- 
tered by heavy blasts of powder. The water 
tears thousands of tons of earth and gravel 
apart, and the muddy stream flows through 
sluices, where the gold is left. In this kind 
of mining a great quantity of debris, or " tail- 
ings," must be disposed of. 

For years this debris was washed into the 
rivers or on farming lands, filling up and 
ruining both, and leading to endless quarrels 
between farmers and miners. But at last the 
courts stopped hydraulic mining except in 
northern counties, where debris went into the 
Klamath River, upon which no boats could run 
and near which was little farming. But all 
the mines in the Sacramento and San Joaquin 



DAYS OF GOLD AND THE ARGONAUTS OF 1849 45 

river-basins were idle till, in 1893, Congress 
appointed a Debris Commission. These mining 
engineers issue licenses to work the mines 
when satisfied that the debris will be kept out 
of the rivers. There are in the state many 
hundred thousand acres of gold-bearing gravel 
lands yet untouched, that could be worked by 
hydraulic mining. 

In drift-mining the rich gravel is covered 
by hard lava rock thrown up by some old 
volcanic outburst. Tunnels are driven by 
blasting with dynamite, or by drilling under 
the rock to reach the gravel which usually 
lies in the buried channel of an old river. 
The long drifts, or tunnels, needed are very 
expensive and only mine owners with capital 
can work these claims. 

Richest of all are the quartz mines, where 
beautiful white rock, rich with sparkling gold, 
is found in veins, or "lodes," cropping out of 
hillsides or dipping down under the earth. 
The great "Mother-lode" of our state runs 



46 DAYS OF GOLD AND THE ARGONAUTS OF 1849 

like an underground wall across Amador, 
Calaveras, Tuolumne, and Mariposa counties 
and has been traced for eighty miles. 

Some poor miner usually finds a ledge of 
quartz-rock and digs down the way the ledge 
goes. He puts up a windlass, worked by hand, 
over the well-like hole he has dug out, and hoists 
the ore out in buckets. But he soon finds, 
as the hole or shaft goes deeper, that he must 
timber the sides to keep them from caving in, 
that he must have an engine to raise the ore 
and a mill to crush the hard rock. So he 
sells out to a company of men, who put in 
costly machinery, deepen the shaft, and by 
heavy expenditure get large returns. 

The quartz ledges dip and turn, so tunnels 
and cross-cuts are run to follow the golden 
vein, and all these are timbered with heavy 
wooden supports to keep the earth and rock 
from falling in on the men. The miners work 
in day and night gangs, using dynamite to 
break up the hard rock, and sending ore up in 



DAYS OF GOLD AND TIIK ARGONAUTS OF 1849 47 

grecat iron buckets, or in cars if the tunnel ends 
in daylight, on the hillside. Sometimes the 
miners strike water, and that must be pumped 
out to keep the mine from being flooded. 

The ore is crushed by heavy stamps, or 
hammers, and then mixed with water and 
quicksilver. This curious metal, quicksilver, 
or mercury, is fond of gold and hunts out 
every little bit, the two metals mixing together 
and making what is called an amalgam. This 
is heated in an iron vessel, and the quicksilver 
goes off in steam or vapor, leaving the gold 
free. The quicksilver, being valuable, is saved 
and used again, while the gold, now called 
bullion, is sent to the mint to be coined into 
bright twenties, or tens, or five-dollar pieces. 

Some of the gold in the crushed ore will 
not mix with the quicksilver, and this is 
treated to a bath of cyanide, a peculiar acid 
that melts the gold as water does a lump of 
sugar. So all of value is saved, and the 
worthless "tailings" go to the dump. 



48 DATS OF GOLD AND THE ARGONAUTS OF 1849 

Even the black sands on the ocean beach 
have gold in them. In the desert also there 
is gold, which is " dry-washed " by putting the 
sand into a machine and with a strong blast 
of air blowing away all but the heavy scales 
of gold. 

Though the Argonauts of '49 found much 
wealth in yellow gold, our '' Golden State," on 
hillsides, in river-beds, or deep down in hidden 
quartz ledges, still holds great fortunes waiting 
to be found. 



MINING STORIES 

A large book might be filled with the stories 
told by the men who found gold in the early 
days. Their ^^ucky strikes" in the ^^dry-dig- 
gings " sound like fairy tales. Imagine turning 
over a big rock and then picking up pieces of 
gold enough to half fill a man's hat from the 
little nest that rock had been lying in for years 
and years! 

And think of finding forty-three thousand 
dollars in a yellow lump over a foot long, six 
inches wide and four inches thick ! This was 
the biggest nugget on record and actually 
weighed one hundred and ninety-five pounds. 
The next one, too, you might have been glad to 
pick up, as it held a hundred and thirty-three 
pounds of solid gold. Little seventy-five and 
fifty-pound treasures were common, and a sol- 

K 49 



50 MINING STORIES 

dier stopping to drink at a roadside stream 
found a nugget weighing over twenty pounds 
lying close to his hand. 

It paid to get up early those days, also 
for a man in Sonora, while taking his morn- 
ing walk, struck his foot against a large stone, 
and forgot the pain when he saw the stone 
was nearly all gold. Another man, with good 
eyes, got a fifty-pound nugget on a trail many 
people used all the time. One day, after 
a heavy rain, a man who was leading a 
mule and cart through a street in Sonora, 
noticed that the wheel struck a big stone; 
he stooped to lift it out of the way, and 
found the stone to be a lump of gold weigh- 
ing thirty-five pounds. In less than an hour 
all that part of the town and the street was 
staked off into mining-claims, but no more 
was found. One of the largest of these nug- 
gets was found by three or four men, who 
took it to San Francisco and the Eastern 
states, and exhibited it for money. They 



MINING STORIES 51 

guarded the f)recious thing day and night, but 
at last quarrelled so that it had to be broken 
up and divided between them. 

The first piece Marshall found was said to 
be worth about fifty cents, and the second over 
five dollars. Almost all, though, that was 
found was like beans or small seeds or in fine 
dust. No one tried to weigh or measure such 
gold more correctly than to call a pinch be- 
tween the finger and thumb a dollar's worth, 
while a teaspoonful was an ounce, or sixteen 
dollars' worth. A wineglassful meant a hundred 
dollars, and a tumblerful a thousand. Miners 
carried their "dust" in a buckskin bag, and 
this was put on the counter, and the store- 
keeper took out what he thought enough to 
pay for the things the miner bought. A large 
thumb to take a large pinch of the gold-dust 
meant a good many extra dollars to the store- 
keeper in '48 and '49. Yet nearly every one 
was honest, and gold might be left in an open 
tent untouched, for there was plenty more to 



52 MINING STORIES 

be had for the picking up. Those who would 
rather steal than work were driven out of 
camp. 

Some of the "sand bars," or banks of gravel 
and earth, washed down by the Yuba River 
were so rich that the men could pick out 
a tin cupful of gold day after day for 
weeks. One place was called Tin-cup Bar 
for this reason. Spanish Bar, on the Ameri- 
can River, yielded a million dollars' worth 
of dust, and at Ford's Bar, a miner, named 
Ford, took out seven hundred dollars a day 
for three weeks. At Rich Bar, on the Feather 
River, a panful of earth gave fifteen hundred 
dollars. 

Yet the miners were seldom satisfied, but 
were always prospecting for richer claims. 
A man would shoulder his roll of blankets, 
his pick and shovel, with a few cooking 
things, and start off hoping to find some 
rich nugget, leaving a fairly good claim 
untouched. 



MINING STORIES 53 

The most extravagcant prices were charged 
the miner for everything he had to buy. Ten 
dollars apiece for pick and shovel, fifty more 
for a pair of long boots, with bacon and pota- 
toes at a dollar and a half a pound, soon 
took all his gold-dust to pay for. A dozen fresh 
eggs cost ten dollars, and a box of sardines 
half an ounce of gold-dust, which was eight 
dollars. There was no butter to buy, for any 
milk was quickly sold at a dollar a pint. 
The hotels charged three dollars a meal, or 
a dollar for a dish of pork and beans, and 
a dollar for two potatoes. 

Lumber cost a dollar and a half a foot, but 
carpenters would not build houses when they 
could make fifty dollars a day by mining. As 
there was no lumber for the cabin floors, the 
ground was beaten hard and really made a 
good floor. In Placerville the houses were 
built along the bed .of a ravine, and in sweep- 
ing these earthen floors some one saw gold- 
dust glittering, and found that rich diggings 



54 MINING STORIES 

were under foot. Thereupon many of the 
miners dug up their cabin floors, and one man 
took about twenty thousand dollars in nuggets 
and gold-dust from the small space his cabin 
covered. 

Very few women and children came to the 
mines in early days, and the first white woman 
to arrive in a camp had all sorts of attentions. 
Sometimes the town was named for the woman 
first in the place as Sarahs ville and Marietta. 
If a lady visited a mining-camp, the men far 
and near would drop work and come in just to 
look at the visitor. One lady, who sang for 
the miners on her arrival in their town, was 
given about five hundred dollars' worth of 
gold-dust. 

A child was a great curiosity, and any 
pretty little gul was sure to have a collection 
of nuggets or a quantity of gold-dust presented 
to her. The theatre and circus companies who 
visited mining-camps soon found out that a 
little child who could sing or dance was a great 



MINING STORIES 65 

attraction. The miners used to throw a shower 
of money or nuggets at the feet of such little 
favorites as we throw flowers now. 

As there were no women living here for 
some time, the men having left their families 
at home in the Eastern states, miners had to 
wash and cook and make bread for themselves. 
Men who had been lawyers or ministers at 
home, when there was no one else to do such 
things, washed their dishes or their red flannel 
shirts. On Sunday no one worked at mining, 
and the men baked bread and cleaned house, 
and Sunday afternoons they dried, patched, and 
mended their clothes. If a minister was in 
town, he held services on a hillside, or in the 
dining room of some shanty called a hotel, 
and all the camp came to hear him speak, or 
sang the hymns with him. 

So the miners lived and worked and wan- 
dered along rivers and rough mountain trails 
on the west side of the Sierras, gathering up 
gold washed down by mountain streams. These 



56 MINING STORIES 

Argonauts, or gold-seekers of fifty years ago, 
are almost all dead now, but the treasures 
they found made California known throughout 
the world. Their golden harvest has made 
the state richer than they found it, for they 
used the wealth to build cities, to cultivate 
farming-lands, and to plant orchards and vine- 
yards where the mining-camps used to be. 



HOW POLLY ELLIOTT CAME ACROSS 
THE PLAINS 

This is the story of a little girl who in 1849 
rode all the way from Ohio to California in 
an emigrant wagon. Polly Elliott has grand- 
children of her own now, but she remembers 
very well the spring morning when her father 
came home and said to her mother, "Lizzie, 
can you get ready to start for the land of gold 
next week ? " She hears again her mother 
saying, " Oh, John, with all these little chil- 
dren?" She says her father answered by 
swinging her, the eleven-year-old Polly, up to 
his shoulder and calling out, "Here's papas 
little woman; she'll help you take care of 
them," as he carried her round the room, 
laughing. 

This was " back East," as Polly Elliott, now 

57 



68 HOW POLLY ELLIOTT CAME ACROSS THE PLAINS 

Mrs. Davis, says, — in Ohio, where they had a 
pretty white house set round with apple and 
peach orchards all white and pink that May 
day. Her mother cried because they must 
leave the house, and because they had to sell 
all their furniture and the stock except Daisy, 
the pet cow, and Buck and Bright, the oxen, 
who were to draw the wagon. A round-topped 
cover of white cloth was fixed on the big farm- 
wagon. Then they piled into it their bedding 
in calico covers, a chest or two holding clothes 
and household goods, a few dishes and cooking 
things, and plenty of flour, corn meal, beans, 
bacon, dried apples and peaches, tied up in 
sacks. 

Polly says she supposed the trip would just 
be one long picnic, while the four children 
thought it fine fun to " sit on mother's feather- 
bed and go riding," as they said. So they 
started off for California. A long, long ride 
these emigrants had before them; a weary 
trip, plodding along day after day with the 



HOW POLLY ELLIOTT CAME ACROSS THE PLAINS 59 

patient oxen walking slowly and the burning 
sun or pelting rain beating down on the wagon 
cover. There was a train of other wagons with 
them, some pulled by horses but more by yoked 
oxen, and the men walked beside the animals 
and cracked long whips. A few men were on 
horseback, but all kept together, for Indians 
were plenty and were often hiding near 
the road, watching for a chance to cut off 
and capture any wagons lagging behind the 
party. 

Day after day, Polly told me, they travelled 
westward to the setting sun. They left the 
orchards and shady woods of Ohio and Indi- 
ana far behind them, and crossed the wide 
prairies of Illinois and Missouri also. When 
they came to rivers they drove through shal- 
low fording-places, where Polly and the children 
used to laugh to see the little fishes swimming 
round the wagon wheels. Sometimes the rivers 
were deep, and the wagons were ferried over 
on a flatboat that was fastened to a wire rope, 



60 HOW POLLY ELLIOTT CAME ACROSS THE PLAINS 

while oxen and horses swam through the 
water behind them. If it did not rain, the 
children and all were happy, and it did seem 
like a picnic. But Polly says she never hears 
the rain pouring nowadays as it did then, 
and that there were many times when they 
were wet and cold and miserable, and because 
the wood and ground were wet they could 
not even have a fire. 

At night the teams were unhitched and the 
wagons left in a circle round a big camp-fire, 
where supper was cooked. Polly says her 
mother used to bake biscuits in an iron spider 
with red-hot coals heaped on its iron cover, and 
these biscuits with fried bacon and tea made 
their meal. They always cooked a big potful 
of corn-meal mush for the children, and this, 
with Daisy's milk and a little maple sugar or 
molasses, was supper and breakfast too. Then 
the women and children cuddled up in the 
wagons for the night, while men slept, wrapped 
in blankets, around the camp-fire or under 



HOW POLLY ELLIOTT CAME ACROSS THE PLAINS 61 

the wagons, with one always on guard against 
danger from prowling Indians or wolves. 

Every man or boy carried a rifle or shot- 
gun, and killed plenty of game. Deer and 
antelope were always in sight after they 
crossed the Missouri River, and the meat was 
broiled or roasted over the coals of their camp- 
fire. Wild turkeys and prairie-chicken tasted 
much better than bacon, Polly said, and she 
learned to cook them herself. 

When the emigrants reached Nebraska, they 
were in the " buffalo country," and great herds 
of big, shaggy, brown or black buffaloes 
were feeding on the grassy plains. The ani- 
mals were larger than oxen, and the Indians' 
depended upon the flesh for food and the thick, 
warm skins for robes or blankets. The emi- 
grants shot thousands of buffalo cows and 
calves, and what meat could not be eaten at 
once was cut into long strips and hung in the 
sun or over the fire to dry. This was called 
"jerking" the meat. On jerked buffalo or 



62 HOW POLLY ELLIOTT CAME ACROSS THE PLAINS 

venison and flour pancakes many emigrants 
lived all the way across. Game was so plenty 
and so easy to shoot, that by stopping a few 
days, a good stock of meat could be laid in 
while the oxen were resting. So they trav- 
elled through Nebraska, and for weeks and 
weeks saw nothing but long grass waving in 
the summer winds, and yellow sunflowers — 
miles and miles of sunflowers. Polly grew 
very tired of the hot sun blazing down on the 
close-covered wagon, and of the dust raised by 
the long wagon-train. 

About this time she remembers that her 
father bought her a little Indian pony, and 
from that happy day the child rode beside 
the wagon, and could keep out of the dusty 
trail, or ride a little way off on the prairie, 
if she liked. The pony carried double very 
well, so a small sister or brother was often 
lifted on behind for a ride. One night the 
Indians, who were always prowling round and 
coming as near the wagon-train as they dared. 



HOW POLLY ELLIOTT CAME ACROSS THE PLAINS 63 

frightened the horses and got away with ten 
of them. All the women and children cried, 
Polly says, for they were afraid the redskins 
would come back and kill them. In the 
morning Polly's father and some of the men 
found the Indians' trail and tracked them to 
a wooded canon. The hungry thieves had 
killed one horse and were so busy feasting on 
it that the white men surprised them and shot 
all the Indians but two or three. The lost 
horses and Polly's pony whinnied to their 
masters from a thicket, where they were tied, 
and were taken back to camp. 

On and on over the great plains of Wyoming 
the wagons carried these emigrants. Many 
found the trip grow tiresome, while the oxen 
and mules would often lie down in their traces 
and refuse to go any farther. A few days' 
rest, and the rich bunch-grass to crop soon 
set the stock all right, and the white-topped 
wagons crawled ahead again. Soon the emi- 
grants saw blue, hazy mountains, far off at 



64 HOW POLLY ELLIOTT CAME ACROSS THE PLAINS 

first, then nearer and nearer, till at last their 
road led through a pass between the peaks. 

Then Polly remembers riding through Utah, 
with its queer red cliffs and high rocks carved 
in strange shapes by winds and weather; the 
stretches of sandy desert ; and beyond those, 
grassy meadows and streams fringed with green 
willows. After a while Great Salt Lake lay 
sparkling in the sun and looking cool and 
blue. All around it were alkali deserts or wide 
plains, hot and dusty and white with salt or 
soda. The " prairie schooners," with their 
covers faded and burnt by the sun, went very 
slowly over these desert wastes, Polly thought, 
and Nevada, with its dusty gray sage-brush 
land on either side of the road, seemed not 
much better. 

" Papa's little woman " had her hands full 
now; for her mother ivas so ill she seldom 
left the wagon. All the cooking fell to Polly's 
share, and then she would ride along for 
hours with a little sister on her lap and fat 



HOW POLLY ELLIOTT CAME ACROSS THE PLAINS 65 

brother "Bub" behind her on the saddle- 
blanket, SO that her mother might rest and 
be quiet. 

But soon the clear green Truckee River ran 
foaming and fretting beside the road, and oE 
in the west rose the snowy peaks of the Sierra 
Nevada Mountains. Then the people began 
to laugh and to sing, for they knew that Cali- 
fornia, the land of gold, was almost in sight 
and that their weary journey was nearly ended. 

And one day they said joyfully to each other, 
" We are in California at last ; " and it was a 
happy company that travelled down through 
the pines of the mountain sides and the oak 
trees of the foot-hills. Many emigrants left the 
train when they got to the great Sacramento 
River valley, and settled here and there to 
farming. Polly's father with others kept on 
to the gold-diggings and camped there. He 
built a log-cabin soon, for it was almost winter 
and time for the rains, and Polly says she 
was glad to have a house at last. They finally 



66 HOW POLLY ELLIOTT CAME ACROSS THE PLAINS 

took up farming land near what is now Stock- 
ton, as gold-mining did not pay. 

Mrs. Davis, who is straight and strong, 
and still a hard worker, says her five months' 
trip across the plains was almost like a long 
picnic after all, for she has forgotten many 
of the trying and disagreeable things. 



THE BUILDING OF THE OVERLAND 
RAILROAD 

The army of emigrants and gold-hunters 
who crossed the plains to California found it 
was a long and tiresome trip by wagon-train 
or on horseback. The oxen or mules would 
sometimes get so tired that they could go 
no farther; and because the food often ran 
short, there was much suffering from hunger. 

The longest way of all to California was 
by sailing vessel from New York round Cape 
Horn, nearly nineteen thousand miles to San 
Francisco. Tlie passengers paid high prices 
and were six months on the way. Those who 
came by the Panama route had trouble cross- 
ing the isthmus, where it was so hot and 
unhealthy that many died of fevers and 
cholera. The Pacific mail steamers connecting 

67 



68 THE BUILDING OF THE OVERLAND EAILROAD 

with a railroad across the isthmus at last 
shortened the time of this trip of six thousand 
miles to twenty-five days. For ten years all 
the Eastern mail came this way twice a month. 

It was thought a wonderful thing when 
the "pony express" carried mail twice a week 
between St. Joseph, Missouri, where the Eastern 
railroads ended, and Sacramento. To do this 
a rider, with the mail-bag slung over his shoul- 
der, rode a horse twenty-four miles to the next 
station, where a fresh pony was ready. Hardly 
waiting to eat or sleep, the rider galloped on 
again. Five dollars was often charged at 
that time to bring the letter railroads carry 
now for two cents. 

So you will see that a railroad to join Cali- 
fornia to the Eastern states was a great neces- 
sity and had often been talked of. Several 
ways to bring the iron horse puffing across 
the plains and up the mountains with his 
long train of cars had been laid out on paper. 
The emigrants had found that the best high- 



THE BUILDING OF THE OVERLAND RAILROAD 69 

way from the Missouri River to California 
was to keep along the Platte River in Ne- 
braska to Fort Laramie and the South Pass 
of the Rocky Mountains, then by Salt Lake, 
and along the Humboldt and Truckee rivers, 
crossing the Sierras at Donner Pass. Other 
roads were talked of, and Senator Benton of 
Missouri favored a nearly straight line between 
St. Louis and San Francisco. Some one, in 
objecting to this, said that only engineers could 
lay out a railroad, and such men did not be- 
lieve a straight line possible. The senator 
answered : " There are engineers who never 
learned in school the shortest and straightest 
way to go, and those are the buffalo, deer, 
bear, and antelope, the wild animals who 
always find the right path to the lowest passes 
in the mountains, to rich pastures and salt 
springs, and to the shallow fords in the rivers. 
The Indians follow the buffalo's path, and so 
does the white man for game to shoot. Then 
the white man builds a wagon-road and at 



70 THE BUILDING OF THE OVERLAND RAILROAD 

last his railroad, on the trail the buffalo first 
laid out." 

For two or three years surveyors and ex- 
plorers tried to find the easiest way to build 
this great overland road. Several railroad acts 
or bills were passed by Congress, and the 
California Legislature gave the United States 
the right of way for a road to join the two 
oceans. 

The first railway in the state was opened in 
'56 from Sacramento to Folsom, a distance of 
twenty-two miles. This was built by T. D. 
Judah, an engineer who had thought and 
studied a great deal about the overland road 
so much needed to bring mail and passengers 
quickly from East to West. 

A railroad convention, made up of men 
from the Pacific states and territories, was held 
in San Francisco in '59, with General John 
Bidwell, a pathfinder of early days, as the 
chairman. Here Mr. Judah gave such a clear 
and full account of the central way he had 



THE BUILDING OF THE OVERLAND RAILROAD 71 

planned, that the convention sent hiin to 
Washington, D.C., to see the President, and 
to try to get Congress to pass a Pacific Rail- 
road Bill. He had very little help in the 
East, but at last four men of Sacramento, 
Leland Stanford, C. P. Huntington, Mark Hop- 
kins, and Charles Crocker, took an interest 
in Judah's plans, and in '61 the Central 
Pacific Railroad Company was formed. Mr. 
Judah went back to the mountains and studied 
the pines in summer and the winter snow- 
banks, to make sure of the easiest grades and 
the shortest and best way for the track-layers. 
He found that to follow the Truckee River 
from near Lake Donner to the Humboldt 
Desert, would mean the least work. The 
tunnels would be through rock, and he believed 
that snow might easily be kept off the track 
with a snow-plough. 

His report pleased the company, and they 
sent him again to present the case at Washing- 
ton. In '62 President Lincoln signed an act 



72 THE BUILDING OF THE OVERLAND RAILROAD 

or bill to allow the Union and Central Pacific 
companies to build a railroad and a telegraph 
line from the Missouri River to the Pacific. 
In California the land for fifteen miles on each 
side of the way laid out was given to the 
railroad company, and two years was allowed 
them to build the first hundred miles of track. 

Ground was broken for the Central Pacific 
the next year in Sacramento, and Governor 
Stanford dug up the first shovelful of earth. 
Then the work went steadily on, but it was 
hard to raise money. Stanford and his com- 
pany carried the line forward as fast as possi- 
ble. More land-grants were given, which 
doubled the company's holdings, and in '65 
the road was fifty-five miles past Sacramento 
and had climbed over much difficult work. 

The steamship owners, the exj)ress and stage 
companies were all against the railroad, and 
tried in every way to make people think that 
an engine could never cross the Sierras. Yet 
the grading went on, while an army of five 



THE BUILDING OF THE OVERLAND RAILROAD 73 

thousand men and six hundred horses was at 
work cutting down trees and hills and filling 
up the low places. A bridge was built over 
the American River, and slowly but surely the 
track climbed the steep mountain-sides. Most 
of the laborers were Chinese, as white men 
found mining or farming paid them better. 

In '67 the iron horse had not only climbed 
the mountains but had reached the state line, 
and the Union Pacific, which had been laying 
its tracks over the plains of the Platte River, 
began to hasten westward. The two railroads 
were racing to meet each other, and the Central 
sometimes laid ten miles of rails in one day. 

Ogden was made the meeting-point, though 
at Promontory, fifty miles west of Ogden, the 
last spike was driven. A thousand people met 
at that place in May, '69, to see the short space 
of track closed and the road finished. A 
Central train and locomotive from the Pacific 
came steaming up, and an engine and cars 
from the Atlantic pulled in on the other side. 



74 THE BUILDING OF THE OVERLAND RAILROAD 

Both engines whistled till the snow-capped 
mountains echoed. The last tie was of polished 
California laurel wood, with a silver plate on 
which the names of the two companies and 
their officers were engraved. It was put 
under the last two rails, and all was fast- 
ened together with the last spike. This 
spike, made of solid gold, Governor Stanford 
hammered into place with a silver hammer. 
East and west the news was flashed over the 
long telegraph line, that the overland railroad 
had been finished and that two oceans were 
joined by hon rails. 

Now, while flying along in the cars so fast 
that the trip from Chicago to San Francisco 
takes but three days, it is hard to believe that 
little more than thirty years ago travellers in 
the slow-moving "prairie-schooner" took over 
five months to cover this same distance. 



STORY OF THE WHEAT-FIELDS 

The Spanish Padres, as the Mission priests 
were called, taught the Indians to plough and 
seed with wheat the lands belonging to the 
church or Mission. They used a simple 
wooden plough, which oxen pulled. When the 
warm brown earth was turned up, the Indians 
broke the clods by dragging great tree branches 
over them. After the fall rains they scat- 
tered tiny wheat kernels and covered them 
snugly for their nap in the dark ground. 

More rain fell, and soon the soaked seeds 
waked, and started in slender green shoots to 
find the sunshine, and day by day the stalks 
grew stronger and the fields greener. Higher 
and ever higher sprang the wheat, till sum- 
mer winds set the tall grain waving in a 
sea of green billows. Have you ever watched 

75 



76 STORY OF THE WHEAT-FIELDS 

the wind blow across a wheat-field? Over 
and over the long rollers bend the tops of 
the grain, that rise as the breeze goes on 
and bend low again at the next breath of 
wind. 

When the hot sun had ripened the grain, 
and all round the white-walled, red-roofed 
Mission the fields stretched golden and ready 
for harvest, the Indians cut the wheat, and 
scattering the bundles over a spot of hard 
ground, drove oxen round and round on 
the sheaves till the wheat was threshed out 
from the straw. Then Indian women win- 
nowed out the chaff and dirt by tossing the 
grain up in the wind, or from basket to bas- 
ket, till in this slow way the yellow kernels 
were made clean and ready to grind. 

A curious mill, called an arrastra, ground 
the grain between two heavy stones. A 
wooden beam was fastened to the upper stone, 
and oxen or a mule hitched to this beam 
turned the stone as they walked round. The 



STORY OF THE WHEAT-FIELDS 77 

first flour-mill worked by water was put up 
at San Gabriel Mission, and it was thought a 
wonderful thing indeed. 

Even in those early days California wheat 
was known to be excellent, and many ships 
came on the South Sea, as they then called 
the Pacific Ocean, to load with grain for Mex- 
ico or Boston or England. Since that time 
our state has fed countless people, and over a 
million acres of valley and hill lands are green 
and golden every year with food for the world. 
To Europe, to the swarming people of China, 
Japan, and India, to South Africa and Aus- 
tralia, our grain is carried in great ships and 
steamers, and hungry nations in many lands 
look to us for bread. 

For a long time after the Mission days, all 
the grain had to be hauled to the rivers or 
sea-coast for shipping. Then the overland rail- 
road was finished, and within the next fifteen 
years an additional two thousand miles of rail- 
ways were built in California, and nearly every 



78 STORY OF THE WHEAT-FIELDS 

mile opened up rich wheat land that had never 
been cultivated. Soon great wheat ranches 
stretched far over the dry, hot valley plains. 

The ground is ploughed and seeded after No- 
vember rains, and all winter the tender blades 
of grain grow greener and stronger day by day. 
March and April rains strengthen the crop 
wonderfully, and June and July bring the 
harvest-time. As no rain falls then, the ripe 
wheat stands in the field till cut, and after- 
ward in sacks without harm. All the work 
except ploughing is done by machinery, and 
this makes the wheat cost less to raise, since 
a machine does the work of many men and 
the expense of running it is small. 

Some of the ranches have three or four thou- 
sand acres in wheat, and it may interest you 
to know how such large farms are managed. 
The ploughing is done by a gang-plough, as 
it is called, which has four steel ploughshares 
that turn up the ground ten inches deep. 
Eight horses draw this, and as a seeder is 



STORY OF THE WHEAT-FIELDS 79 

fastened to the plough, and back of the plough 
a harrow, the horses plough, seed, harrow, and 
cover up the grain at one time. There the 
seed-wheat lies tucked up in its warm brown 
bed till rain and sunshine call out the tiny 
green spears, and coax them higher and 
stronger, and the hot sun of June and July 
ripens the precious grain. 

Then a great machine called a "header and 
thresher" is driven into the field and sweeps 
through miles and miles of bending grain, 
cutting swaths as wide as a street, and har- 
vesting, threshing, and leaving a long trail of 
sacked wheat ready to ship on the cars. 
Thirty-six horses draw the header, and five or 
six men are needed to attend to this giant, 
who bites off the grain, shakes out the kernels, 
throws them into sacks and sews them up, 
all in one breath, as you might say. The 
harvesters work from daylight to dusk, and 
three-fourths of our wheat crop is gathered 
in this way. 



80 STOEY OF THE WHEAT-FIELDS 

Much golden straw is left, besides that 
which the " headers " burn as fuel, and farmers 
stack this straw for cattle to nibble at. 
The stock feed in the stubble fields, too, and 
strange visitors also come to these ranches to 
pick up the scattered grains of wheat. These 
strangers are wild white geese, in such large 
flocks that when feeding they look like snow 
patches on the ground. They eat so much 
that often they cannot fly and may be 
knocked over with clubs. In the spring these 
geese must be driven away by watchmen with 
shot-guns to keep them from pulling up the 
young grain. 

The largest single wheat-field in California 
is on the banks of the San Joaquin River, in 
Madera County. This covers twenty-five thou- 
sand acres and is almost as flat as a floor. It 
is nearly a perfect square in shape, and each 
side of the square is a little over six miles 
long. There are no roads through this solid 
stretch of grain. Two hundred men, a thou- 



STORY OF THE WHEAT-FIELDS 81 

sand horses, and many big machines are needed 
to work this wheat-field. 

Some of the big harvesters that cut and 
thresh the wheat are drawn by a traction- 
engine instead of horses. In running a fifty- 
horse-power engine high-priced coal had to be 
burnt, but now the coal grates are replaced 
by petroleum burners, and crude coal-oil is 
the cheap fuel. This does not make sparks 
to set the fields on fire like burning coal or 
straw and so is safer to use. 

On large ranches wheat can be grown for 
less than a cent a pound, while it has brought 
two cents or double the money when sold. But 
there are not always good crops, as the grain 
needs plenty of moisture in the spring when 
rains are uncertain. 

The wheat crop of the state has fallen off 
of late to less than half the yield of earlier 
years, but the deep, rich valley soil still grows 
grain enough to feed hungry people in Eu- 
rope, Asia, and Africa, as well as in our own 



82 STORY OF THE WHEAT-FIELDS 

Union. Great quantities are taken in large 
four-masted ships to Liverpool, England, and 
there made into American flour. Our own 
flour-mills turn out thousands of barrels of 
flour, and this travels far, too. The first thing 
picked up in Manila after Admiral Dewey's 
victory was a flour sack with a California 
mill mark. 

It would need a long, long story to tell 
how far from home and into what strange 
places the yellow kernels of California wheat 
sometimes travel, or to picture the odd people 
who depend upon us for food. 



ORCHAKD, FARM, AND VINEYARD 

Long ago the Mission Fathers taught the 
Indians to plant and to take care of vines 
and fruit-trees. They built water-works to 
bring life to the thirsty trees in the dry 
summers, and to grow oranges, limes, and 
figs, as well as peaches, apricots, and apples. 
They trained grape-vines over arbors and 
trellises round the Mission buildings, and from 
the small, black grapes made wine. Olive trees 
and date-palms did well at the southern settle- 
ments. But most of these orchards died when 
the Mission Fathers were no longer allowed to 
make the Indians work for the church prop- 
erty, though a few old palms and olive trees 
are still standing. 

During Mexican days each ranch owner 
raised enough grain or corn and beans for 

83 



84 ORCHARD, FARM, AND VINEYARD 

his own family but planted no fruit, or but 
little, while the Americans who came to seek 
gold thought farming a slow way of making 
a living. People soon found out, however, 
that our fine climate and rich soil made good 
crops almost certain, and there was such de- 
mand for fruit and farm products that more 
and more acres were cultivated each year. 

Our leading industry now is farming and 
fruit-growing, and California's delicious fresh 
or cured fruit is sent all over the world. 
Large amounts of barley and hops are shipped 
from here to Europe, and our state produces 
almost all the Lima beans used in the 
country. 

The citrus fruits, as oranges, lemons, and 
pomelos, or "grape-fruit," are called, grow 
in the seven southern counties, or in the foot- 
hills on the western slope of the Sierras. The 
trees cannot endure frost and must be irri- 
gated in the summer. Orange trees are a 
pretty sight, with their shining green leaves, 





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ORCHARD, FARM, AND VINEYARD 85 

white, sweet-smelling flowers, and the green or 
golden fruit. About Christmas-time, when 
oranges ripen, both blossoms and fruit may 
be picked from the same tree. Los Angeles 
and Orange County grow most oranges, but 
San Diego is first in lemon culture. Half a 
million trees in that county show the bright 
yellow fruit and fragrant blossoms every month 
in the year. The other southern counties also 
raise lemons by the car-load to send east, or 
for your lemonade and lemon pies at home. 

There, too, the olive grows well, that little 
plum-shaped fruit you usually see as a green, 
salt pickle on the table. The Mission Fathers 
brought this tree first from Spain, where the 
poor people live upon black bread and olives. 
Olives are picked while green and put in a 
strong brine of salt and water to preserve 
them for eating. Dark purple ripe olives are 
also very good prepared the same way. Did 
you know that olive-oil is pressed out of ripe 
olives? The best oil comes from the first 



86 . ORCHARD, FARM, AND VINEYARD 

crushing, and the pulp is afterwards heated, 
when a second quaUty of oil is obtained. Olive 
trees grow very slowly, and do not fruit for 
seven years after they are planted. But they 
live a hundred years, and bear more olives 
every season. 

The black or purple fig which grew in the old 
Mission gardens bears fruit everywhere in the 
state. Either fresh and ripe, or pressed flat and 
dried, it is delicious and healthful. White figs 
like those from abroad have been raised the 
last few years, and it is hoped in time to 
produce Smyrna figs equal to the imported. 

While peach orchards blossom and bear fruit 
six months of the year in the south, most of 
this pretty pink-cheeked fruit grows in the 
great valleys, or along the Sacramento River. 
Pears also show their snowy blossoms and 
yellow fruit in the valleys and farther north. 
The Bartlett pear is sent to all the Eastern 
states in cold storage cars kept cool by ice, 
and also to Europe. 



ORCHARD, FARM, AND VINEYARD 87 

The finest apricots are tliose of that won- 
derful southern country, miles and miles of 
orchards lying round Fresno especially. Yet 
the valleys and foot-hills produce plenty, and 
in the old mining counties very choice fruit 
ripens. Apples like the high mountain valleys, 
where they get a touch of frost in winter, 
though there is a cool section of San Diego 
County where fine ones are raised. Cherries 
do well in the middle and valley regions, the 
earliest coming from Vacaville, in Solano 
County. 

Grapes grow throughout the state, though 
the famous raisin vineyards, where thousands 
of tons are dried every year, are around 
Fresno. Most of the raisins are dried in the 
sun, but in one factory a hundred tons of 
grapes may be dried at one time by steam. 
The raisins are seeded by machinery, and 
packed in pretty boxes to send all over the 
coast, and through the states, where once only 
foreign raisins were used. Many vineyards 



88 ORCHARD, FARM, AND VINEYARD 

in the southern part and middle of the state 
grow only wine grapes, California wines, cham- 
pagne, and brandy having a wide use. 

Great quantities of fresh fruits are used 
in the state or sent away, while the can- 
neries put up immense amounts, also. 
Canned fruit reaches many consumers, but it 
is expensive. Our cured or dried fruit, however, 
is so cheap and so good that millions of pounds 
are prepared every year. Such fruit ripens on 
the tree and so keeps all its fine flavor. It is 
then dried in the sunshine, which not only fits it 
for long keeping but turns part of it to sugar. 
Apricots, peaches, pears, and cherries are usually 
cut in halves or stoned before drying. Prunes 
are first on the list of cured fruits, and they 
seem the best to use as food. The ripe prunes 
are dipped into a boiling lye to make the skin 
tender, then rinsed and spread in the sun a 
day or two. They are then allowed to 
" sweat " to get a good color, are next dipped 
in boiling water a minute or two, dried, and 



ORCHARD, FARM, AND VINEYARD 89 

finally graded, a certain number to the pound, 
and packed in boxes or sacks. 

Several kinds of nuts grow well in the state. 
All the so-called " English " walnuts, with 
their thin shells, are raised in the south, 
Orange County furnishing haK the amount we 
market. Peanuts and almonds are a good 
crop there, also, though almond groves are in 
all parts of the state. Both paper and thick- 
shelled almonds are usually bleached, or whit- 
ened, with sulphur smoke to improve their color. 

Santa Barbara and Ventura are the bean 
counties of the state, and send Lima beans 
away by train-loads, while Orange County 
grows celery for the Eastern market. Very 
high prices are received for this celery and 
other vegetables sent from California during 
the winter season when fields are covered with 
snow in the East. 

And did you know that the state produces a 
great deal of sugar ? Tons and tons of sugar- 
beets are grown throughout the farming lands. 



90 ORCHARD, FARM, AND VINEYARD 

and harvested in September. When the juice 
of these crushed beets is boiled and refined, it 
makes a sugar exactly like cane sugar and 
much cheaper. One-fifth of the beet is sugar, 
it is said. 

Even the dry, worthless mountain sides are 
valuable to the bee-keeper. The bees make 
a delicious honey from the wild, white sage, 
which grows where nothing else will live. 
This sage honey brings the very highest price. 

Oats are raised in the coast counties, and corn 
in the valleys, but owing to cool nights and 
dry air the corn seldom makes a good crop. 
Orange County, however, claims corn with 
stalks twenty feet high and a hundred bushels 
to the acre. In the south, also, that wonderful 
forage-plant, alfalfa, will produce six crops a 
year by irrigation and give a ton or more to 
the acre at each cutting. 

Along the upper Sacramento River stretch 
the great hop-fields full of tall vines covered 
with light-green tassels. At hop-picking season 



ORCHARD, FARM, AND VINEYARD 91 

many families have a month's picnic, children 
and all working day after day in the fields 
and pulling off the fragrant hops. Indians, too, 
are among the best hop-pickers. The dried 
hops are bleached with sulphur, baled, and in 
great quantities sent to Liverpool, where with 
California barley they are used in brewing malt 
liquors. 

An odd crop is mustard, and at Lompoc, in 
Santa Barbara County, enough for the whole 
country is grown. Both brown and yellow 
mustard is cultivated, and the little seeds, almost 
as fine as gunpowder, are sold to spice-mills and 
pickle-factories. 

Whole farms are taken up w^ith the pro- 
duction of flower-seeds or bulbs, with acres 
and acres of calla-lilies, roses, carnations, and 
violets. The tall pampas-grass, with its long 
feathery plumes, gives a profitable crop. In- 
deed, one can scarcely name a fruit, flower, or 
tree that will not thrive and grow to perfection 
in our mild climate and rich soil. 



THE STORY OF THE NAYEL ORANGE 

Who has not enjoyed a juicy navel orange, 
while wondering at its peculiar shape and lack 
of troublesome seeds? Yet few people know 
that this particular variety has brought millions 
of dollars into our state and made orange grow- 
ing our third greatest industry. 

Read this story of the seedless orange, this 
" golden apple of California," which was first 
cultivated by Luther Tibbets, of Riverside, 
and learn how Southern California has profited 
by its navel orange crops. 

Nearly thirty years ago Mr. Tibbets came 
from New York to this state and took up free 
government land near what is now the beauti- 
ful city of Riverside. He was one of the half- 
dozen pioneer fruit-growers of that region, and 
had noticed at the San Gabriel Mission how 

92 




Hop A^ixes. 










«4Xiite..^ -.,j4>., 



Among the Hop Vines. 



THE STORY OF THE NAVEL ORANGE 93 

well orange trees grew there. His wife and 
daughter waited in Washington, D.C, until a 
home should be ready here for them, and they 
often sent Mr. Tibbets plants and seeds from 
the Department of Agriculture. To this De- 
partment and its gardens in Washington, 
many curious plants are forwarded from 
other countries for growing and experiment in 
the United States. New kinds of grain or 
fruits are carefully cultivated and watched by 
the Department, and from it farmers can always 
get seeds or cuttings to try on their own 
farms. 

Mrs. Tibbets often visited the Department 
gardens, and in 1873 she wrote to her husband 
that she could get him some fine orange trees 
if he would promise the government to take 
great care of them and to keep them apart from 
other trees till they fruited. Of course he 
agreed to give them special attention, and 
therefore that December he received three 
small, rooted orange trees. A cow chewed up 



94 THE STORY OF THE NAVEL ORANGE 

one of these, but for five years the others 
were watched and tended. Then sweet white 
blossoms appeared on each httle tree, and after- 
wards two oranges, like hard green bullets 
at first. Finally, in January, 1879, Mr. Tibbets 
picked four large, well-flavored, golden oranges, 
the first seedless ones ever grown outside of 
Brazil. 

From the hot swamps of the tropical coun- 
try at Bahia the United States Consul had 
sent six cuttings of this peculiar orange to be 
planted in the Washington gardens. All died 
but the two at Riverside. In 1880 they 
bore half a bushel of fruit, and the new seed- 
less oranges were talked of throughout South- 
ern California. The other orange growers had 
been cultivating " seedlings," trees which bore 
smaller fruit, with many bitter seeds and a 
thick skin. Many of these growers now cut 
back their seedlings to bare limbs, and grafted 
the new orange on these branches. This is 
called " budding," and is done by cutting off a 



THE STORY OF THE NAVEL ORANGE 95 

thin slip of bark with a tiny folded-up leaf-bud 
on it, inserting the graft in the branch to be 
budded and securing it there with wax to keep 
the air out. The little bud drinks in sap from 
the tree stem, and grows and blossoms true to 
its own mother tree. 

There were few orange groves then, but 
soon nearly all were budded to the new kind, 
seventy-five acres being so changed on the 
Baldwin Ranch; and when these trees began 
to bear, some five years afterwards, people were 
much excited over the seedless fruit. 

Such high prices were paid for these oranges 
at first, that orange growing boomed all over 
Southern California. People thought their for- 
tunes were made when they set out a few 
acres of small budded trees they had paid a 
dollar or more apiece for. Whole towns sprang 
up in dry treeless valleys where only cattle 
and sheep had pastured, and land worth only 
twenty-five dollars an acre before the orange 
excitement, sold quickly for eight hundred and 



96 THE STORY OF THE NAVEL ORANGE 

a thousand when planted with trees. The 
towns of Pomona, Eedlands, Monrovia, and 
others in the orange localities were unknown 
before 1885, and grew to several thousand 
population in a few years. Everybody talked 
of the great profit in orange growing, and 
people who had nurseries of young trees grown 
from navel buds made fortunes. 

At this day thousands of acres of seedless 
oranges are in full bearing and no one buys 
the old kinds. Hundreds of car-loads of the 
seedlings are not even picked, and ninety per 
cent of the eighteen thousand car-loads which 
make the season's orange crop are navel or- 
anges. Over forty-five millions of dollars are 
now invested in the growing and marketing of 
this remarkable fruit. 

At Riverside, the home of the orange, the 
two original Washington navel trees still 
stand. Mr. Tibbets guarded them for years, 
had them fenced with high latticework, and 
seldom allowed any one to touch them. He 



THE STORY OF THE NAVEL ORANGE 97 

refused ten thousand dollars for them, since 
for months he sold hundreds of dollars' worth 
of buds from these parent trees. These two 
trees and their large family have caused 
thousands of people to come to the state, and 
have built up Southern California wonderfully. 



THE LEMON 

For many years people who use that sour 
but necessary fruit, the lemon, thought that 
only the little yellow ones which came from the 
far-away island of Sicily were good. The 
men who import foreign fruits always said so; 
and in spite of the fact that the larger Cali- 
fornia lemon was more acid, of as good flavor, 
smooth skinned, and golden, people believed the 
Mediterranean groves produced the best. But, 
at last, our warm, dry air, good soil, and plenty 
of water, together with care and skill while 
growing and packing, have made California 
lemons the most in demand. These lemons 
keep well, and bear shipping and long journeys 
better than the imported fruit. 

Citrus fruits, as the orange and lemon are 
called^ do well in all the southern counties, 



THE LEMON 99 

and San Diego County boasts of not only the 
largest lemon grove in California, but in the 
world. This is a thousand-acre tract over- 
looking San Diego Bay and cultivated by the 
Chula Vista colony. It was once a pasture 
given up to wandering bands of cattle and 
sheep. There was little water, and no one 
ever thought these dry mesa lands would one 
day be a beautiful garden spot, green with the 
shining lemon leaves, and golden with fruit. 

A company was formed to develop this 
forty-two square miles of land, and to get 
water for irrigation, since all the trees must 
have little streams of water round their thirsty 
roots three or four times during the dry sum- 
mer. A great dam was constructed on the 
Sweetwater River, near Chula Vista, and a 
reservoir built. Water was piped from this to 
the lemon groves, which are about a hun- 
dred feet below the reservoir, and from May 
to September the trees are irrigated. This is 
done by ploughing furrows on each side of a 
:LofC. 



100 THE LEMON 

row of trees and turning small rills of water 
slowly down them till the ground is soaked 
around the tree roots. No one thought the 
great reservoir would ever be empty, but two 
winters with but little rain made it necessary 
to put down many wells in the dry bed of the 
Sweetwater River, and from these a strong 
steady flow of millions of gallons is pumped 
into the water pipes. So this great lemon 
orchard is always sure of water enough, re- 
turning the gift later in generous golden 
measure. 

One may pick lemon blossoms, ripe and 
green fruit every month in the year from the 
same tree, but most of the crop ripens from 
November to June. 

Lemons are carefully cut from the tree, 
and usually picked by size, a ring being slipped 
over them, without regard to their ripeness. 
They grow so thick on the tree that a man 
can pick more than twenty boxes a day. In 
preparing it for market the fruit "sweats," as 





Ah 
O 

< 
< 

Pi 
pq 

w 

S 



THE LEMON 101 

it is called, in airy boxes, for a month in winter 
and ten days in summer, and ripens and 
colors during this process. Then each lemon 
is wiped dry and clean, wrapped separately in 
tissue-paper, and packed for shipment. The 
cost of a box of lemons from the tree to the 
railroad is about thirty-five cents. 

Thousands of car-loads are shipped to the 
Eastern and Middle states, while the Pacific 
Coast is a never-failing market. 

Small, imperfect, and bruised fruit goes to 
the citric acid factory near the packing-houses. 
From these oil of lemon, lemon sugar, and 
clear green citric-acid crystals are made, and 
the crushed waste is returned to the grove 
and ploughed in about the trees as a fertilizer. 



FLOWEKS AND PLANTS 

"When California was wild/' says John Muir, 
"it was one sweet bee-garden throughout its 
entire length, and from the snowy Sierra to 
the ocean." 

There were so many yellow poppies in this 
great unfenced garden, that the Spanish sailing 
along the coast called it the "Land of Fire" 
from the golden flowers covering the hills. 
Near Pasadena, in Southern California, these 
poppy fields may still be seen glowing so 
brightly in the sun that you do not wonder 
at the name " Cape Las Flores," or Flower 
Cape, which the sailors also gave to this part 
of the country. 

The poppy is our best-known wild flower, 
planted by Mother Nature before white men 
ever visited these shores. When the Spanish 

102 




In a Mission Garden, 




A ( iiiasTMAS Garden. 



FLOWERS AND PLANTS 103 

settled here they called the poppy copa de oro, 
or cup of gold. The gold hunters spoke of it 
as the California gold flower, and sent the 
pressed poppies home in their letters. But its 
correct name is the Eschscholtzia (esh-sholt'si-a), 
from the name of a German botanist and natu- 
ralist, who studied the plant and wrote about 
it almost a hundred years ago. 

From February to May the poppies are 
most plentiful, but a few may be found almost 
every month in the year. Have you noticed 
the finely cut green leaves, and the pointed 
green nightcap that covers each bud till the 
morning sunshine coaxes off the cap and un- 
folds the four satiny golden petals? The 
flowers love the sun and close up on dark, 
cloudy days, or if brought into the house. 
But put them in a sunny window the next 
morning, and you may watch the cups of gold 
open to the light. 

Some of the poppies are a deep orange-color, 
while others are a pale yellow. And as you 



104 FLOWERS AND PLANTS 

walk through the fields you may pick a hun- 
dred at each step, so thick do the plants 
grow. The wild bees find a yellow dust called 
pollen or "bee-bread " in the poppy, the same 
golden powder that rubs off on your nose, 
when you put it too close to this cup of gold 
or to lilies. 

Then in this "unfenced garden" were also 
the baby blue-eyes, whose pretty pale-blue 
blossoms come early in the spring, each one 
with a drop of honey at the foot of its honey 
path, as the black lines on its petals are 
called. 

Can you name twenty kinds of wild flowers ? 
Around San Francisco and the bay counties 
you will count, after the poppy and baby blue- 
eyes, the shining yellow buttercup, the blue 
and yellow lupines that grow in the sand, 
the tall thistle whose sharp, prickly leaves and 
thorny red blossoms spell " Let-me-alone," the 
blue flag-lilies and red paint-brush, yellow 
cream-cups, and wild mustard, and an orange 



FLOWERS AND PLANTS 105 

pentstemon. These with many yellow com- 
positse, or flowers like the dandelion, you will 
find growing on the windy hills and dry, sunny 
places. ' Hiding away in quiet corners are the 
blue-eyed grass, and a wild purple hyacinth, 
the scarlet columbine swinging its golden 
tassels, shy blue larkspur, a small yellow sun- 
flower, and wild pink roses. Among the ferns 
in shady, wet nooks are white trilliums and 
a delicate pink bleeding-heart, while the wild 
blue violets and yellow pansies love the warm, 
rocky hillside. 

Mariposas, or butterfly tulips of many colors, 
grow in the foot-hills and mountains. Perhaps 
our most beautiful wild flowers are the lilies, 
of which we have over a dozen kinds. In 
the redwood forests there is a tall, lovely pink 
lily, and many brown-spotted yellow tiger-lilies. 
Up in the mountain pines a snowy white 
Washington lily sometimes covers a mountain 
side with its tall stems bearing dozens of sweet 
waxen blossoms. In the wet, swampy places 



106 FLOWERS AND PLANTS 

bright red, and many small orange lilies bloom 
in late summer. 

In the high Sierras are found strange and 
pretty blossoms unlike the flowers of valleys 
and sea-coast. There you will see the moun- 
tain-heather with pinkj purple, or dainty white 
bells, the goldenrod, and gentians blue as the 
sky. Strangest of all is the snow-plant. This 
curious thing sends up a thick, fleshy spike a 
foot or so in height and set closely with bright 
scarlet flowers. It grows where the snow has 
just melted round the fir trees, and leaf, stem, 
and blossom are all the same glowing red. 

Most of the valley and coast wild-flowers 
bloom and ripen their seeds before the dry 
summer begins. Such plants die and wither 
away in the heat, but their seeds are safe 
on the warm ground till fall rains soak the 
earth and set them growing again. In the 
high mountains a thick blanket of snow covers 
the sleeping seeds till May or June, and then 
sunshine wakes them once more. 



FLOWERS AND PLANTS 107 

No doubt you have seen many of our shrubs 
or tall bush-plants ui your vacations. Do you 
remember the sweet creamy white azaleas and 
the buckeyes that grow along the creeks in 
the redwoods ? And the feathery blue blos- 
soms of the wild lilac crowding in close thickets 
up the hillsides? One of our shrubs is a holi- 
day visitor, the Christmas-berry, whose bright- 
red clusters trim your house at that gay, happy 
season. The manzanita is another pretty bush, 
with pink bells that ripen to small scarlet 
apples in the fall. 

Usually, these and other shrubs cover the 
hillsides with a thick, matted tangle of stems 
and branches almost impossible to get through. 
This chaparral, as the Spanish called it, clothes 
the foot-hills and mountain sides with a close 
growth through which deer and bears alone 
can travel and make trails or runways. Great 
stretches of buckthorn in the north, and of 
sage-brush in the south, cover the wild lands, 
while in the sandy desert tall, prickly cactus, 



108 FLOWERS AND PLANTS 

yucca, and mesquite grow with the sage-brush 
in the blazing sun. 

Only a few of Cahfornia's wild plants and 
flowers have been now called to your notice. 
But children have sharp eyes, and you will 
find many more to inquire about in your 
vacation days. Then the blackberries and 
thimble-berries will be ripe, and the pink 
salmon-berry in the redwoods. Perhaps you 
will look for and dig up the soaproot, that 
onion-like bulb of one of the lily family with 
which the Indians make a soapy lather to wash 
their clothes. Let us hope you will know and 
keep away from the "poison-oak," the low 
bush with pretty red leaves, for its leaves are 
apt to make your skin swell up and blister 
wherever they touch you. 

What a long and pleasant story might be 
told you of our state's real gardens ! Perhaps 
your teacher will give you an hour to talk 
about your home gardens, and to see how much 
you can tell about them. You may have 



FLOWERS AND PLANTS 109 

flowers the year round, if you live on the coast, 
or in the warm valleys where no Jack Frost 
comes with his icy breath to kill the tender 
plants. In such genial climates roses and 
geraniums bloom all year, and only rest when 
the gardener cuts them back ; and most of the 
shrubs and trees in parks and gardens are 
always fresh and green. 

Florists who raise flowers to sell find that 
here they can grow the choicest and finest 
carnations, roses, and all the garden blossoms 
you know so well. Many of these florists deal 
only in flower-seeds, and bulbs or roots of 
the lilies to send to the Eastern states or abroad, 
where people greatly prize California flowers. 

Plants and trees from all parts of the world 
thrive here, also. You have seen the palms, 
the tall sword-palm with its great spike of 
snowy bloom in the spring, the fan-palm whose 
dried and trimmed leaves are really used for 
fans, and, perhaps, the date-palm. This tree 
was planted round the Missions by the Padres, 



110 FLOWERS AND PLANTS 

and some, more than a hundred years old, are 
still standing at the San Gabriel Mission. 
These, and the magnolia with its large creamy 
blossoms, as well as the graceful pepper-tree, 
are natives of warm, southern lands, while the 
eucalyptus, or gum-tree, was brought here from 
Australia. 

Look round, children, as you walk to and 
from school, or in the park, and try to know 
and name the green things growing there, the 
flowers and plants sent to make our world a 
pleasant place to live in. 



THE BIG TREES AND LUMBERING 

The largest trees in the world are those 
forest giants of California which grow on the 
western slopes of the Sierra Nevadas, and 
nowhere else on the globe. People carelessly 
call these grand trees "redwoods" or "big 
trees," but their family name is Sequoia, an 
Indian chief's name. When the trees were 
first discovered, in 1853, accounts of their 
height and size were sent to England. Sup- 
posing this giant to be a new tree, it was 
there christened Wellingtonia, and also gigantea 
for its immense measurements. While Ameri- 
cans were trying to have it called Washing- 
tonia, a famous Frenchman who knew all 
about trees decided that the specimen sent 
him was certainly a sequoia, as named by a 
German professor some six years, before this 

111 



112 THE BIG TREES AND LUMBERING 

time. So the tree was called sequoia gigantea, 
and quietly went on growing, unmindful of 
the four nations who had quarrelled over its 
christening. Why, indeed, should it bother 
its lofty head with the chatter of people whose 
countries were unknown when this mighty 
tree was full grown ? For these sequoias are 
the oldest of living objects and have prob- 
ably been growing for four thousand years. 
How do we know this ? Well, when a fallen 
trunk is sawed across, one can see rings in the 
wood, and it is thought that each ring is a 
year's growth. John Muir counted over four 
thousand of these annual rings on the stump 
of one of the Kings River trees. 

These fine old trees grow in groves, and 
of the nine or ten groves the Calaveras and 
Mariposa are the best known. The Calaveras 
group of nearly a hundred mighty trees was 
the first one discovered, and four trees here 
are over three hundred feet high. The fallen 
"Father of the Forest" must have been much 



THE BIG TREES AND LUMBERING 113 

higher, for it measures a hundred feet round 
its trunk at the root end. A man can ride 
on horseback for two hundred feet through 
its hollow trunk as it lies on the ground. 
Many of the standing trees hollowed out 
by fires are large enough, used as cabins, to 
live in. 

The Mariposa grove of Big Trees, being not 
far from Yosemite Valley, is the best known, 
as thousands of tourists visit both places. 
There is a big tree at Mariposa for every day 
in the year, and two very wonderful ones, 
the Grizzly Giant and Wawona. Stage-coaches 
drive into the grove through the tree Wawona, 
which was bored and burned out so as to make 
an opening ten by twelve feet. A wall of 
wood ten feet thick on each side of this opening 
supports the living tree. The great Grizzly 
Giant towers a hundred feet without a branch, 
and twice that height above the first immense 
branches that are six feet through. This was, 
no doubt, an old tree when Columbus dis- 



114 THE BIG TREES AND LUMBERING 

covered America, yet it is alive and green and 
still growing. 

The largest tree in the world is the General 
Sherman, in Sequoia National Park, and it 
is thirty-five feet in diameter. This means 
that the stump of the tree, if smoothed off, 
would make a floor on which thirty people 
might dance, or your whole class be seated. 
You can scarcely imagine what a mighty 
column such a tree is, with its rich red- 
brown bark, fluted like a column, too, and 
with its crown of feathery green branches and 
foliage. The bark is a foot or two thick. 
The trees are evergreens, and conifers, or 
cone-bearers. Sequoia cones are two or three 
inches long and full of small seeds. The 
Douglas squirrel gets most of these seeds, but 
there are still seedlings and saplings or young 
trees enough to keep the race alive in most 
of the groves. 

These groves of wonderful and rare trees are 
protected as National Parks in the Sequoia and 



THE BIG TREES AND LUMBERING 115 

Grant groves, and Mariposa belongs to the 
state. It is against the law to cut the trees 
in those groves. Their worst enemy is fire, 
and a troop of cavalry is sent every year to 
guard them, and to keep out the sheep-herders, 
whose flocks would destroy the underbrush and 
young trees. But, unfortunately, lumbermen 
have put up mills near the Fresno and Kings 
River groups, and, wasting more than they use, 
are destroying magnificent trees thousands of 
years old in order to make shingles. When 
nature has taken such good care of this rare 
and wonderful tree, the Sierra Giant, men 
should try to preserve the groves unharmed 
in all their beauty. 

Another sequoia grows in great forests 
along the Coast Range from Santa Cruz to 
the northern state-line, and beyond into Ore- 
gon. This is the sequoia sempervirens^ the 
Latin name meaning always green. Redwood 
is its common name, and the lumber for 
our frame or wooden houses is cut from this 



116 THE BIG TREES AND LUMBERING 

tree. Millions of feet of this redwood lumber 
are shipped from the northern counties of the 
state every year, up to Alaska or down to 
Central and South America. It is also sent 
far across the Pacific to the Hawaiian and 
Philippine islands and to China and Australia. 
While the sequoia gigantea delights in a 
clear sky and hot sunshine, its brother, the 
sempervirens, prefers a cool sea-coast climate, 
offering frequent baths of fog. There is also 
a difference in the size of these trees; the 
redwood is often three hundred feet high, but 
is less in girth than its relative in the Sierras. 
There is not much imderbrush and little 
sunshine in the cool, green redwood forests, 
each tree rising tall and stately for a hundred 
feet without branches, while the green tops 
seem almost to touch the sky as one looks 
up. Through the woods one hears the blue 
jay scream and chatter, and the tap, tap of 
the woodpecker as he drills holes in the bark 
to fill with acorns for his winter store. 



THE BIG TREES AND LUMBERING 117 

When the lumberman looks at these beauti- 
ful forests, he sees only many logs containing 
many thousand feet of lumber, which he must 
get out the easiest and cheapest way. He 
only chooses the finest and largest trunks, and 
there is great waste in cutting these. The 
men begin to saw the tree some eight or ten 
feet from the ground, and soon it trembles 
and falls with a mighty crash, often snapping 
off other trees in its way to the ground. After 
all the selected trees have fallen, fires are started 
to burn off the branches and underbrush so that 
the men can work easier. This fire only chars 
the outside bark of the big, green logs, but it 
kills all the young saplings, and leaves the once 
beautiful forest a waste of blackened logs and 
gray ashes. When the fire burns itself out, 
the logs are usually sawed with a cross-cut 
saw into sixteen-foot lengths, since in that 
form they are easy to handle. Then oxen or 
horses haul them out; or sometimes a wire 
cable is fastened to them by iron ^^ dogs," or 



118 THE BIG TREES AND LUMBERING 

stakes, and a little stationary engine pulls 
them away to the siding at the railroad track. 
Here they are rolled on flat-cars, fastened 
with a big iron chain around the four or six 
logs on the car, and taken on the logging 
train to the mill-pond. They lie soaking in 
the water until drawn up to the keen saws 
of the sawmill that cut and slice the wood 
like cheese. The bark and outside is carved 
off as you would cut the crust off bread, and 
then sharp, circular saws cut boards and 
planks till the log is used up, and the log- 
carriage lifts another to its place. As the 
shining steel bites into the wood the noise 
almost deafens you and the mill shakes with 
the thunder of log-carriage and feeders. Use- 
less ends, slabs, and refuse are bm-nt in the 
sawdust pit, where the fires never go out. 
Very much of the tree is wasted and all the 
limbs. The redwood tree has so much life and 
strength, however, that it sends up bright green 
sprouts around the burnt stump, and standing 



THE BIG TREES AND LUMBERING 119 

trees charred outside to the tops will have 
new branches the next season. In the older 
forests tall young trees are often seen growing 
in a ring round an empty spot, the long-dead 
stump having rotted away. 

Near Santa Cruz is a grove of large and 
beautiful redwoods, many of the trees being 
over three hundred feet high and from forty 
to sixty-five feet around the base of the 
trunk. The Giant is the largest, and three 
other immense ones are named for Generals 
Grant, Sherman, and Fremont. In 1846 Gen- 
eral Fremont found this grove, and camped, on 
a rainy winter night, in the hollow trunk of 
the tree bearing his name. Here is also seen 
a group of eleven very tall trees growing in a 
circle around an old stump. 

In the Sierras, both in the sequoia groves 
and forests above the Big-Tree region, are 
very large sugar-pines, red firs, and yellow- 
pine trees, all of which make excellent lumber. 
Great forests of these trees, with cedars almost 



120 THE BIG TREES AND LUMBERING 

as large as the redwoods, are in the northern 
counties also. You may have seen sugar-pine 
cones which are over a foot long, the largest 
of all found, while redwood cones are the small- 
est. Another great tree is the Douglas spruce, 
the king of spruce trees, growing in both 
Sierra Nevada and Coast ranges. 

The California laurel, or bay tree, with its 
beautiful, shining green leaves, and the ma- 
drono, the slender, red-barked tree on the hill- 
sides you must have noticed in your trips to 
the country, as well as our fine valley and 
mountain oaks. Try to learn the kinds of 
trees and study their leaves, blossoms, and 
fruit, and you will find every one a friend 
well worth knowing. Then you will wish to 
save them from fire and the lumberman's axe, 
especially the rare and old sequoias. 



OUR BIRDS 

More than three hundred kinds of these 
dear feathered friends and visitors live in 
California. Along the sea-shore, in the great 
valleys and the mountain-forests and meadows, 
even in the dry, hot desert, the birds, our 
shy and merry neighbors, are at home. In 
many parts of the state they find sunshine 
and green trees the year round, and food 
always at hand. Yet sparrows, robins, and 
woodpeckers will stay in the sno wed-in groves 
of the Sierras all winter, contentedly chirping 
or singing in spite of the bitter cold. 

If you know these wanderers of wood 
and field, these birds of sea and shore, and 
their interesting habits, you will wish to 
protect them from stone or gun, and their 
nests from the egg collector. You will listen 

121 



122 OUR BIRDS 

to the lark and linnet, and be glad that 
the happy songster trilling such sweet notes 
is free to fly where he wishes, and is not 
pining in a cage. And you, little girl, will 
not encourage the destruction of these pretty 
creatures by wearing a sea-gull or part of 
some ,dead bird on your hat. 

To become better acquainted with birds, 
let us call them before us by classes, begin- 
ning with our sea-birds and those round the 
bays and on the coast. Some of these not 
only swim but dive in the salt waters, and 
to this class of divers belong the grebe, loon, 
murre, and puffin. They dive at the flash of 
a gun, and after what seems a long time, 
come up far away from the spot the hunter 
aimed at. These birds usually nest on bare, 
rocky cliffs near the ocean, or on islands like 
the Farallones, and their large green eggs 
hatch out nestlings that are ugly and awk- 
ward and helpless on land. But they ride 
the great ocean-breakers, or dive into their 



OUR BIRDS 123 

clear depths easily and gracefully ; and as 
they live upon fish or small sea-creatures, 
the divers only seek land to roost at night 
and to raise their young. 

Next come the gulls, who belong to a class 
known as " long-winged swimmers." They 
have strong wings and fly great distances, 
and with their webbed feet swim well, too. 
Most of the sea-gulls are white with a gray 
coat on their backs, but they look snowy- 
white as they fly. You may see them walk- 
ing about the wharves, or perching on roofs 
and piles watching for food, and seeming 
very tame as they pick up bits of bread or 
the refuse floating in the water. They follow 
steamers for miles, scarcely moving their 
wings as they float in the air; and if you 
throw a cracker from the deck, some gull will 
make a swift swoop and snatch it before the 
cracker reaches the water. 

Far out on the Pacific the albatross sails 
proudly on his broad wings, and cares noth- 



124 OUE BIRDS 

ing for high wmds or storms. He rests and 
sleeps on the billows at night with his little 
companions, the stormy petrels. He is the 
largest and strongest of our birds of flight, 
the very king of the sea. The stormy petrels 
are not much larger than a swallow. Sailors 
call them " Mother Carey's chickens," and are 
sure a storm is coming up when petrels 
follow the ship. The albatross, petrel, and 
a gull-like bird called a shearwater belong to 
the "tube-nosed swimmers," on account of 
their curious long beaks. 

Along the coast, and wading in the shallow 
waters around the bays, are some strange 
birds known as pelicans and shags. They 
are good fishers, and drive the darting, finny 
fellows before them as they wade in the 
water till they can see and gobble them up. 
Most waders have under their beaks a skin- 
pocket deep enough to hold a fish while 
carrying it to their nestlings, or making 
ready to swallow it. All of these sea-birds 



OUR BIRDS 125 

raise their young as far from the shore and 
from hunters as possible. Great flocks of 
them roost on islands fifteen or twenty miles 
out in the ocean, and fly into the bays every 
morning. 

Wild ducks, geese, the herons, mud-hens, 
sandpipers, and curlews are marsh and shore 
birds that feed and wade in the shallow salt 
water, and nest on the banks or, like the 
heron, in trees near the bay. The heron is 
a frog-catcher, and he will stand very still 
on his long legs and patiently wait till the 
frog, thinking him gone, swims near. Then 
one dart of the long bill captures froggy, 
and the heron waits for another. You know 
the red-head, green mallard, canvas-back, and 
small teal ducks, no doubt, and have seen 
the flocks of wild geese flying and calling in 
the sky, or standing like patches of snow as 
they feed in the marshes or grain-fields. 

Down on the mud-flats at low tide you 
may see birds called rails, and also " kill-dee " 



126 OUR BIRDS 

plovers. The shoveller ducks are there, too, 
fishing up with broad, flat beaks little crabs 
and such creatures as are in the mud, strain- 
ing out mud and water, but swallowing 
the rest. All these birds are " waders " and 
delight in mud and cold salt water. They 
are usually quiet, or make only strange, shrill 
cries. 

In the sunny fields and woods we shall 
find many of the land-birds, and first comes 
a family whose habits are so like those of 
chickens that they are called " scratchers." 
These birds depend for food upon seeds and 
bugs or worms they scratch out of the 
ground. Up in the Sierra sugar-pines and fir- 
woods lives the largest of these " scratchers," 
the brown grouse. He is a shy creature, 
rising out of his feeding-ground with a great 
whirring of wings and out of sight before 
the hunter can fire at him. His peculiar 
cry, or "drumming," as it is called, sounds 
through the woods lilce tapping hard on a 



OUR BIRDS 127 

hollow log. His equally shy neighbor is the 
mountain-quail, while through tlie farming 
lands and all along the hillsides the valley- 
quail are plenty. Perhaps you have seen a 
happy family of these speckled brown birds. 
Papa quail has a black crest on his head, and 
he calls " Look right here " from the wrong 
side of the road to fool you, while Mamma 
and her little, cunning chicks scatter like 
flying brown leaves in the brush. After the 
danger is past, you hear her low call to bring 
them round her again. In the desert and 
sage-brush part of the state the sage-hen, 
another " sera teller," runs swiftly through the 
thickets, but many are caught and brought 
in by the Indians. 

Our birds of prey are eagles, vultures, hawks, 
owls, and the turkey-buzzards, those big black 
scavengers that hang in the air. In circles high 
above woods and fields some of these birds of 
prey sweep on broad wings, searching with keen 
sight for their food in some dead animal far 



128 OUR BIRDS 

below. The California condor, a great black 
vulture-like -bird, is almost extinct, and is only 
found in the highest mountains. It is very large 
of wing, and strong enough, it is said, to carry 
off a sheep. Both golden and bald eagles nest 
in tall trees in the wildest parts of the state. 
The chicken-hawk, whose swift sailing over the 
poultry-yard calls out loud squawking from the 
frightened hens, you have often seen, and the 
wise-looking brown owls, too. A small burrow- 
ing owl lives in the squirrel holes, and you may 
catch him easily in the daytime, when he can- 
not see. 

The road-runner is of the cuckoo family of 
birds. It seldom flies, but runs swiftly along 
the roads, or in the desert, and is said to 
kill rattlesnakes by placing a ring of thorny 
cactus leaves around the snake as it lies 
asleep. The rattler is then pecked to death, 
since it cannot get out of its prickly cage. 
This fowl is like a slender brown hen in size. 

In the redwoods you hear the tap, tap, of 



OUR BIRDS 129 

the " carpenter " woodpecker, with his black 
coat and gay red cap. He drills holes in the 
bark of a tree with his strong beak and then 
fits an acorn neatly into each safe little store- 
house. It is thought that worms and grubs 
fatten while living in these acorns, so that 
the woodpecker always has a meal ready in 
the winter when the ground is wet, or the 
squirrels have carried off the acorns under the 
trees. 

Humming-birds, or " hummers," as the boys 
call them, are plenty in city and country and so 
fearless that they will take a bath in the spray 
of the garden-hose, or dart their long bills in the 
fuchsias almost within your reach. The bill 
shields a double tongue, which gets not only 
honey, but small insects from the flower or off 
the leaves. The humming-bird's tiny nest is a 
soft, round basket, not much bigger than half a 
walnut-shell, and holding two eggs, which are 
like small white beans. Bits of moss and gray 
cobwebs are woven in this nest till it looks like 



130 OUR BIRDS 

the branch itself; and here the little mother in 
her plain brown dress hatches out and feeds the 
baby "hummers." Her husband has glistening 
ruby feathers at his throat and green spots 
on his head and back that glow in the sun 
like jewels. 

The highest class of birds is the "perchers," 
and many friends of yours belong to this. 
There are two families, however, of perchers, 
those that call and the song-birds. Calling 
over and over their peculiar note, the .pewees, 
flycatchers, and king-birds, fly through tlie 
forests. The crow and blue jay belong to the 
singers, you will be surprised to hear. And 
what a crowd of these song-birds there are 
trilling and warbling in the sunshine ! Have 
you ever watched the meadow-lark singing as 
he sits on guard on the fence, while the rest of 
his brown-coated yellow-vested flock run along 
the field picking up seeds and insects ? 

Then there are the linnets, or " redheads," 
who sing their sweet, merry tunes all summer, 



OUR BIRDS 131 

and if they do take a cherry or two the farmer 
should not grumble. They destroy many bugs 
and caterpillars and eat weed-seeds that might 
trouble the fruit-grower mure than the missing 
cherries. Tlie yellow warbler, sometimes called 
the wild canary, tlits through bush and tree and 
trills its gay notes in town and country. Song- 
sparrows, thrushes, and bluebirds warble far 
and near, while the red-winged blackbird makes 
music in wet, swampy places. The robin, who 
comes to city gardens in the winter, has a 
summer home in the mountains or redwoods. 
There, too, the saucy jay screams and chatters, 
and flashes his blue wings as he flies, scolding 
all the time. 

In Southern California, among the orange 
groves or in gardens, the mocking-bird trills 
in sweet, liquid notes his wonderful song. 
He mimics, too, many sounds he hears, and 
sometimes when caged will whistle tunes or 
say words. The mocker can crow or cackle 
like the chickens, or mew like the cat. Then 



132 OUR BIRDS 

he will whistle clear and loud till dogs or boys 
answer his call. When they find themselves 
fooled, it is said, he mimics a laugh. 

From April to July the birds are busy, nest- 
ing, feeding their families, or teaching them to 
fly. Many eggs never hatch, and some are 
destroyed by wild animals. Boys often rob 
a whole nest to have one little blown egg in 
their collections. Then again the mother is 
killed and her brood starves to death. When 
the parent birds are teaching the nestlings to 
fly, cats also catch the little ones. So you 
see the poor feathered things have many 
enemies. 

Let us try to protect the birds, and to let 
them live happy lives in freedom. Each one 
will thank you, either with sweet songs or 
with being a beautiful thing to see on land or 
ocean. 




Young Towhee. 




Baby Yellow Warbleks. 

From photographs by Elizabeth Grinnell. 



OUR WILD ANIMALS 

Once upon a time, when the Spanish owned 
this state and called it their province of Alta 
California, there were great herds of antelope 
feeding on the grassy plains, and at every lit- 
tle stream elk and deer and big grizzly bears 
came down to drink. No fences had been 
built, and the wild animals had never heard a 
rifle-shot. Free and fearless they ranged valley 
and hillside, or made their dens in the thick 
brush, or " chaparral," as the Spanish called it. 

Indian hunters watched the paths over 
which these wild creatures travelled to water, 
and killed deer and antelope with their 
arrows. But these hunters were afraid of 
grizzly bears, for an arrow in Mr. Bear's thick 
hide only made him cross, and with one hug, 
or even a light blow from his paw, he could 

133 



134 OUR WILD ANIMALS 

cripple the poor Indian. So in those early 
days the old bears came year after year, and 
carried off sheep and cattle. The simple 
folks did not even try to kill them. Indeed, 
many of the red men believed that very bad 
Indians were punished by being turned into 
grizzly bears when -they died, and they would 
not hurt their brothers, they said. 

When Father Serra's Mission people were 
starving at Monterey, the Padre learned that 
at a place called Bear Valley near by, there 
were many grizzlies which the Indians would 
not kill. He sent Spanish soldiers there, and 
they shot so many bears that the hungry 
Mission family had meat enough to last till a 
ship came from Mexico with supplies. 

Of all flesh-eating animals this grizzly bear 
is the largest and strongest. He can knock 
down a bull with his great paws, or kill and 
carry off a horse. He can live on wild ber- 
ries and acorns with grass and roots he digs 
out of the ground, yet fresh meat suits him 



OUR WILD ANIMALS 135 

best, and he prefers a calf, wliicli he holds as 
a cat does a mouse. 

Nothing but stock was raised in California 
in those days so long ago, and cattle were 
counted by the thousands and sheep by tens 
of thousands. Then the grizzly and cinnamon, 
or brown, bear feasted all the time on stray 
calves and yearlings. Every spring and fall 
the cattle, which had roamed almost wild in 
the pastures, were " rounded up " by the cow- 
boys, or vaqueros. After the work of picking 
out each ranchero's stock and branding the 
young cattle was over, the vaqueros thought it 
fine fun to lasso a bear, — some old fellow, 
perhaps, who had been helping hunself to 
the calves. It is told that one big cinna- 
mon bear, while quietly feeding on acorns, 
looked up to find three or four cow-boys on 
their ponies in a circle around him. They 
spurred the trembling ponies as close to him 
as they dared, and yelled at the tops of their 
voices. The great brute sat up on his 



136 OUR WILD ANIMALS 

haimches and faced them, growling and snarl- 
ing. One vaquero sent his rope flying through 
the air, and the loop settled over a big, hairy 
fore paw. Then the bear dropped on all fours 
and made a jump at the pony, which got out 
of his reach. Another Mexican threw a lasso 
and caught the bears hind foot; and as he 
sat up again a third noose dropped over the 
other fore paw. Then the poor trapped crea- 
ture, growling, snarling, and rolling over and 
over, began a tug of war with the lariats and 
the ponies. Once a rope broke, and horse 
and rider tumbled in front of the bear. He 
made a quick, savage jump, but was pulled 
back by the other ropes. Then Mr. Bear sat 
up straight and tugged so hard that another 
lariat broke and sent the saddle and rider 
over the pony's head. With one sweep of his 
paw the bear smashed the saddle, but the 
cow-boy saved himself by running to an oak 
tree. At last Mr. Bear was getting the best 
of the fight so plainly, and had pulled the 



OUR WILD ANIMALS 137 

frightened ponies so near him, that the man 
who was thrown off ended the poor animal's 
struggles with a rifle-ball. 

A Chinese sheep-herder tells this funny 
story about a bear : " Me lun out, see what 
matta ; me see sheep all bely much scared, 
bely much lun, bely much jump. Big black 
bear jump over fence, come light for me. Me 
so High ten me know nothin', then me scleam 
e-e-e-e so loud, and lun at bear till bear get 
scared too and lun away." 

A few grizzlies are still found in the 
Sierras, and black and brown bears are often 
seen with their playful little cubs. The small 
fellows are easily tamed and may be taught 
many tricks. They will live contentedly in a 
bear-pit, or even if chained up, and as most 
of you know, they like peanuts and pop-corn 
well enough to beg for them. 

The panther, or mountain-lion, is another 
large flesh-eating animal which makes his 
home in the thick woods conveniently neigh- 



138 OUR WILD ANIMALS 

boring the farmers' corrals and pastures. Not 
long ago a boy in Marin County, who was 
sent to look after some ponies, saw a big 
yellow dog, as he thought, "worrying" one of 
the colts. When he came nearer he found it 
was a wicked-looking, catlike creature, and 
knew it must be a California lion. He had 
nothing with him but a heavy whip. The 
panther left the wounded colt and crouched 
ready to spring at the boy, but he was on 
the alert and struck it a terrible blow across 
the eyes with his whip, and then another and 
another. Half-blinded and whining with pain, 
the panther turned tail and ran away, while 
the boy's pony, trembling and snorting with 
fright, galloped home with his brave rider. 

In one of the mountain counties a woman, 
hearing her chickens squawking one day at 
noon, ran out to find what seemed a big dog 
among them with a hen in his mouth. She 
rushed straight at him with a broom, when the 
animal turned. She found it was a great 



OUR WILD ANIMALS 139 

panther, who snarled and made ready to spring 
at her. As she screamed and started to run 
away, her foot slipped on a steep and muddy 
place, and she slid down the little hill right 
into the panther's face. He was so frightened 
that he jumped the fence and hurried to the 
woods. 

This great yellow cat is both savage and 
cowardly, and he has been known to follow 
a man walking through the woods, all day, 
yet he sneaked out of sight at every loud call 
the man gave. He chases deer and gets many 
small and helpless fawns, hunters say. 

Fur-hunting was once a profitable business 
for the Indians, who were clothed in bear and 
panther skins when the first white men came 
to California, and had many furs to trade or 
sell. The Indians trapped otters, beavers, and 
minks, and the squaws tanned the deer-hides 
to make buckskin shirts or leggings. Hunters 
and trappers still bring in these wild animals' 
furry coats after trips to the high mountains 



140 OUR WILD ANIMALS 

or untravelled woods, where the shy creatures 
try to live and be safe from their enemies. 

In early days herds of a very large deer^ 
called elk, fed on the wild oats and grass. 
These elk had wide, branching horns measur- 
ing three or four feet from tip to tip. Only 
a few of them now survive in the redwood 
forests in the northern counties. There were 
plenty of them once where San Francisco 
now stands. Dana in his book called " Two 
Years Before the Mast," tells us that when 
his ship dropped anchor off the little village 
of Yerba Buena about sixty-seven years ago, he 
saw hundreds of red deer and elk with their 
branching antlers. They were running about 
on the hills, or standing still to look at the 
ship until the noise frightened them off. At 
that time the whole country was covered with 
thick trees and bushes where the wolf and 
coyote prowled, and the grizzly bear's track 
was seen everywhere. 

There are plenty of deer in the redwoods 




California Red Deer. 

From a i)h()togriii)h by Georpe V. lIobiIl^ 



OUR WILD ANIMALS 141 

now, and in the high Sierras are black-tailed 
and large mule-deer. In the woods round 
Mount Tamalpais timid red deer live, too. In 
winter, when it is cold and snowy in the northern 
counties of our state, these deer often come into 
the farmer's barnyard to nibble at the hay. 

There are still left in the mountains among 
the pines and snowy cliffs many mountain- 
sheep. These curious big-horned animals re- 
semble both the elk and the sheep, and it is said 
they can jump from a high rock and land 
far below on their feet or heavy, twisted horns 
without being hurt in the least. 

Of all the great herds of graceful, fast- 
running antelope, once the most plentiful of 
our wild animals, only a very few can now be 
found on the eastern slopes of the Sierras. 

But Master Coyote, who might well be spared, 
so cruel and cowardly is he, still sneaks up and 
down the whole state, and his quick sharp 
bark gives notice that the rascal is ready to 
steal a chicken or a lamb if it is not protected. 



142 OUR WILD ANIMALS 

With his bushy tail and large head he is half 
fox and half wolf in appearance, and mean 
enough in habits to be both. He can outrun 
a dog and even a deer, and though he catches 
jack-rabbits and the Molly Cottontail usually 
for food, he would help his brother, the wolf, 
to kill a poor harmless sheep. 

This gray wolf is a savage creature and hides 
in the thick forests by day, slinking out at 
night to the nearest sheep corral or turkey-pen 
if he can find one unwatched by some faith- 
ful dog. His friend and neighbor, the fox, 
likes fat geese and chickens as well as birds, 
squirrels, and wood-rats. The queer raccoon 
lives in the redwoods and is often caught 
and kept in a cage or chained for a pet. 

Wildcats, both gray and yellow, are found 
in the thickly timbered parts of California, 
and the badger makes his home in the moun- 
tain canons or pine woods. There, too, the 
curious porcupine dwells. He is covered with 
grayish white quills, which bristle out when 



OUR WILD ANIMALS 143 

he is angry or frightened. No old dog will 
touch this animal, for he knows better than 
to get a mouthful of sharp toothpicks by 
biting Mr. Porcupine, who is like a round 
pincushion with the pins pointing out. A 
dog who has never seen this prickly ball will 
dab at it, and have a sore paw to nurse for 
weeks after. 

Two or three kinds of tree-squirrels live 
in the pines and redwoods, the Douglas squirrel 
being well known in the mountains. The 
ground squirrel, or chipmunk, digs holes in 
the ground, where he hides his winter's store 
of grain and nuts. 

Three of our smaller wild animals are very 
common and very troublesome to the farmer. 
The skunk, which looks like a pretty black 
and white kitten with a bushy tail, and also 
the weasel, destroy all the chickens and eggs 
they can reach, and they are so cunning that 
it is hard to keep them out of the hen-house. 
That little pest, the gopher, we are all well 



^ 144 OUR WILD ANIMALS 

acquainted with, since he gnaws the pinks 
and roses off at their roots in your city garden 
while his large family of brothers and sis- 
ters kill the farmer's fruit-trees and vines. 
The gopher digs long tunnels under ground, 
making storerooms here and there in these 
passages, which he fills with grass, roots, and 
seeds. In each cheek he has a pouch, or pocket, 
large enough to hold nearly a handful of grain, 
so the little rascal carries his stores very easily. 
The traps and poison by which the farmer is 
always trying to make way with him, he is 
sly enough to let alone. His greatest foe 
is the cat, which watches patiently at the hole 
where the destructive little fellow is digging 
and usually catches him. A mother cat will 
sometimes bring in two or three gophers a 
day to her kittens. 



IN SALT WATER AND FRESH 

Tom and Retta Ransom were two of the 
happiest children in the state, I believe, when 
told that their summer vacation was to be 
spent at Catalina Island. To see the wonder- 
ful fish that swim in those warm, Southern 
waters, to watch them through the glass-bot- 
tomed boat, to dip out funny sea-flowers with 
a net, or catch the pretty kingfish and per- 
haps a " yellowtail," — why, they could talk 
of nothing else ! 

How they skipped and danced and chattered 
about the trip! At last Mamma said, "Well, 
everything is packed and ready, and we go 
to-morrow." Then what fun it was to stand 
on the steamer's deck and sail " right out 
through the Golden Gate," as Retta said. 
The big green billows of the Pacific Ocean 

L 146 



146 IN SALT WATER AND FRESH 

caught the boat as she crossed the outside 
bar and tossed salt spray almost into their 
faces. Little the children cared for the drops 
of water, for they were so glad to be off on 
their trip and to say good-by to San Fran- 
cisco's summer fog and cold winds for a time. 
And there on Seal Rocks, near the Cliff 
House, were the seals, or rather sea-lions, 
clumsy creatures like black rubber sacks with 
fins, or flippers, and a head. Some were lying 
in the sun and others crawling up the steep, 
wet rocks. Those highest up were asleep and 
quiet, but most of them kept barking or 
growling as they tried to find a sunny place 
to bask in. Sometimes when frightened these 
sea-lions will pitch headlong from high rocks 
into the ocean and dive out of sight at once. 
Mrs. Ransom said she remembered seeing one 
that was kept for years in a salt-water tank, 
and that, although they seem so clumsy, this 
sea-lion jumped so quick that he caught a 
fish thrown to him before it touched the 



IN SALT WATER AND FRESH 147 

water. Once fur-seals were in great numbers 
off our coast, and lived on the rocks as these 
sea-lions now do. But Indians, or later on 
white hunters, killed them, or drove them up 
north where the crack of the rifle is not 
heard. 

On to the south the steamer sailed through 
the foaming waters, and as Tom stood watch- 
ing the white-capped waves go dancing by, he 
saw, two or three times, a black fin come up, 
and then another. At last a man said, 
" Look at the porpoises playing." Tom 
screamed with delight as they jumped and 
chased each other till their black, shiny backs 
were clear out of water. These fish are 
sometimes called sea-hogs and are fiYe or six 
feet long. Either to get their food of small 
fish, or in play, they keep swimming and div- 
ing near the tops of the breakers. Fishermen 
catch them with a strong hook and use the 
thick, leathery skin for straps or strings, while 
they try oil out of their blubber or fat. 



148 IN SALT WATER AND FRESH 

All that day and night the boat kept stead- 
ily on her way, and the next morning they 
were in Santa Barbara Channel. It was so 
pleasant sailing on this summer sea in the 
soft, warm sunshine that even the sea-sick 
ladies felt better and came on deck. Mamma 
agreed with the children that the steamer trip 
was much nicer than the hot, dusty cars. 
Just then some one called, " See the whale," 
and looking quick Tom and Retta saw what 
seemed a fountain of water rising high in the 
air about half a mile away. Soon another 
went up, and two or three more, for the gray 
hump-backed whales like this stretch of 
smooth bay. They are warm-blooded animals 
and not fish at all, so they must come to the 
top of the waves for air to breathe. The air 
and water spout out through " blow-holes " on 
top of the whale's head, and rise like steam 
in the colder air. The children's mother told 
them that the whale is the largest of all ani- 
mals, and that it lives on little jellyfish. It 



IN SALT WATER AND FRESH 149 

swims with its great mouth wide open and 
catches all the tiny sea creatures in its path. 
A fringe of whalebone hangs down from the 
roof of the whale's mouth, and he strains the 
water out through this and swallows the fish. 
As the boat went on, the children said, 
" There she blows," as the sailors do when 
they see whales spouting m the distance. 

Late that night the steamer got to San 
Pedro, and you may be sure Tom and Retta 
were up early the next morning. As they 
came off the boat, there was a crowd of peo- 
ple on the wharf who were pulling in "yel- 
low-tail " as fast as they dropped their lines. 
This fine fish is a little like a big salmon, but 
with golden-yellow^ fins and tail. Its body 
is greenish gray, with spots of the prettiest 
rainbow colors, which grow brighter as the 
. fish dies. These fish bite easily, but as soon 
as caught begin to rush back and forth, fight- 
ing and trying to snap the line. 

The children here took a smaller steamer 



150 IN SALT WATER AND FRESH 

for the twenty-mile trip across to Catalina 
Island, and on the way over they saw a 
whole "school" of whales and a flight of 
flying-fishes. Yes, really and truly, these lit- 
tle fish fly or sail through the air, for their 
fins balance them like a parachute. They 
skim along ten or twelve feet above the 
waves, and then drop in the water to rest, 
taking another flight whenever their enemies, 
the porpoises, chase them. 

How happy the children were to land at 
the little town of Avalon, and to know that 
they were to have a month at this beautiful 
place! They hurried down to the beach and 
their first choice of amusements was the 
glass-bottomed boat. These boats have 
"water-telescopes," which are only clear glass 
set in boxed-in places. The glass seems to 
make the ripples still, so that you can look 
down, down to the bottom of the ocean, 
twenty or thirty feet below you. 

The boatman rowed the children out in 



IN SALT WATER AND FRESH 151 

the bay, where the water, now green, now 
blue, was always clear as crystal. On the 
rocks and sand at the bottom starfish and 
crabs crawled slowly along or clung to some 
stone. The purple sea-urchins, queer round- 
shelled creatures covered with thorny spines, 
crowded together, and the ugly toad-fish hid 
in the green and brown seaweeds. Blue, 
purple, and rainbow-colored jellyfish floated 
on top of the waters, while gold perch with 
red and green sunfish swam through the 
seaweed "like parrots in some hot country's 
woods," Retta thought. In the shallow places 
on the rocks those curious sea-flowers, the 
anemones, looked like pink or green cactus 
blossoms. The children never tired of the 
water-telescope in all their stay at the island. 
At night the warm ocean waters seemed on 
fire, since they are full of very tiny, soft- 
bodied creatures, each of which gives out a 
faint, glowing light. Every day the fisher- 
men brought in new and strange fishes. The 



152 IN SALT WATER AND FRESH 

black sea-bass, heavier than the fisherman 
himself and longer than he was tall, were 
wonderful, and they could hardly believe that 
such big fish were caught with a rod and 
line. 

But the leaping tuna pleased Tom the 
most, since he thought it such fun to watch 
them jump into the air like silver arrows 
after the flying-fish. Not so large as the 
black bass, the tunas are strong enough to 
tow a boat along when running with a hook. 
One will drag a heavy launch through the 
water as if a tug had hold of it, and will 
fight for hours, rushing and plunging till 
tired out. Then the fisherman pulls him up 
to the boat and ends his struggles. 

Tom and Ketta were fond of watching the 
curious fish and sea-plants in the glass 
aquarium tanks on shore also, but their hap- 
piest time was when they gathered shells on 
the beach. They never found out the names 
of more than those of the limpet, turban, 



IN SALT WATER AND FRESH 153 

and scallop, though they picked up baskets 
full of tiny pink and white beauties, all frail 
and of many kinds. These shells were once 
the homes of sea mollusks, as such soft, 
fleshy creatures are called. But to Tom and 
Ketta the shells were only pretty playthings, 
to be doll's dishes, or cups, or pincushions, 
perhaps. 

One morning some fishermen saw a shark, 
and no one dared to go in bathing for a few 
days. This great, savage, " man-eater " shark 
does not often come north of the Gulf of 
California. Sometimes small ones are caught 
with a hook and line off Catalina Island, 
and Tom was always glad to see such sea- 
tigers destroyed. 

Of course the children did not want to go 
home, till at last Mrs. Ransom explained to 
them that in the ocean and bay near San 
Francisco there were odd fish and strange 
animals too. And so it turned out, for in a 
day's fishing over at Sausalito Tom caught 



154 IN SALT WATER AND FRESH 

many silver smelt and tomcod, with flat, 
ugly flounders, and a red, big-eyed rock-cod. 
The frightened boy almost fell out of the 
boat, too, when he pulled in a large sting-ray, 
or "stingaree," as the boatman called it. This 
queer three-sided fish, with a sharp, bony 
sting in its back, flopped round till the 
man cut the hook out, knocked its head till 
it was no longer able to bite, and threw it 
overboard. These rays have to be fenced out 
of the oyster-beds along the bay, since they 
have big mouths full of such strong teeth 
that they crush an oyster, shell and all, 
and destroy every one they can reach. 

Oysters are grown in great quantities in 
the oyster-beds along the bay shore. The 
largest size, which are called " transplanted," 
are brought from the East as very small or 
baby oysters and dropped into shallow water, 
where they cling to rocks or brush-piles till 
grown. 

Tom also caught a perch, and clinging to 



IN SALT WATER AND FRESH 155 

it as he drew in his line was a large, hard- 
shelled, long-clawed crab. Tom put the crab 
in the basket, knowing well what delicious 
white meat was in the fellow's legs and 
back. 

Clams that burrow deep in the mud and 
may be found at low tide, by digging where 
their tell-tale bubble of air arises, and the 
odd shrimps, so good to eat, the children 
already knew about. Chinese fishermen catch 
shrimps in nets, dry them on the hillsides, and 
send both dry meat and shells to China. They 
dry the meat of the abalone also, and use 
the beautiful shells, which you have no 
doubt ^een, for carving into curios, or mak- 
ing into jewellery. 

A salt-water creature very destructive to 
shipping and the wharves is the teredo, or 
ship- worm. This brown inch-long worm lives 
in wood that is always under water, such as 
the bottoms of ships and the round piles you 
see at the wharves. He hollows or bores 



156 , IN SALT WATER AND FRESH 

out winding tunnels in the wood with the 
sharp edge of his shell until the piles 
crumble to pieces. This small animal would 
finally destroy the largest wooden ship if 
sheets of copper were not put on the sides 
and keel to protect it. 

When Retta saw Tom's basket of fish she 
said, ^'Well, I think the fresh-water fishes 
much prettier. I am sure the rainbow and 
Dolly Yarden trout with their bright-colored 
spots, which we saw up in the Truckee 
River and the mountain lakes last summer, 
were better to look at and to eat than 
these sea monsters." Tom laughed and said, 
" Oh, that was because you helped to catch 
some of those. Do you remember the big 
black-spotted trout we saw in Lake Tahoe ? 
And the little speckled fellows we caught 
in that clear creek in the redwoods, and 
how we wrapped them in wet paper and 
cooked them at our camp-fire ? I wish we 
could go up to the McCloud River, though, 



IN SALT WATER AND FRESH 157 

and see the baby trout in the fish hatchery 
there." 

So their mother told them that the tiny 
trout eggs were kept in troughs with clear, 
cold water running over them till they 
hatched out. Then the little things, not 
half as long as a pin, were placed in large 
tin cans and sent to stock brooks and lakes, 
and in a year or so they grew big enough 
to catch. 

The most valuable of our food-fishes is the 
salmon, a large silvery-sided salt-water fish 
that takes fresh-water journeys too. For they 
swim up the rivers every year to lay their 
eggs in the clear, cold streams, knowing, per- 
haps, that the salmon-fry, as the young are 
called, will have fewer enemies away from the 
ocean. The salmon go over a hundred miles 
up to the McCloud River to spawn, and will 
jump or leap up small falls or rapids in their 
way. Indians spear many of them, but a 
number go back to the ocean again. Thou- 



158 IN SALT WATER AND FRESH 

sands and thousands of ocean salmon are 
caught along the northern coast and taken to 
the canneries. There the fish are put into 
cans and cooked, and when sealed up are sent 
all over the world. California salmon is eaten 
from Iceland to India, and its preparation 
and sale give employment to many people. 




Humpback Whale (57 feet long). 




Trout from Lake Tahoe. 



ABOUT CALIFORNIA'S INDIANS 

When the Spanish and Enghsh first landed 
on this part of the New World's coast, they 
found the Indians who dwelt inland almost 
naked, and living like wild animals on roots 
and seeds and acorns. The tribes along the 
seashore, however, were good hunters and fisher- 
men, and those Indians along the Santa 
Barbara Channel and the islands near by were 
a tall, fine-looking people, and the most intelli- 
gent of the race. They had large houses and 
canoes, and clothed themselves in sealskins. 

The Indians Drake saw near Point Reyes 
had fur coats, or cloaks, but no other clothes. 
They brought him presents of shell money or 
wampum, and of feather head-dresses and 
baskets. With their bows and arrows they 
killed fish or deer or squirrels, and being Very 

159 



160 ABOUT CALIFORNIA'S INDIANS 

strong ran swiftly after game. They seemed 
gentle and peaceable with the white men and 
each other, and were sorry to have Drake 
sail away. 

In later years the Indians who lived here 
when the Mission Padres came were stupid 
and brutish, because they knew nothing better. 
They were lazy, dirty, and at first would not 
work. But the patient Padres taught them 
to raise grain and fruit, to build their fine 
churches, to weave cloth and blankets, and to 
tan leather for shoes, saddles, or harness. 
But although the Indians learned to be good 
workmen, they liked idleness, dancing, and 
feasting much better, and when the Missions 
were given up the Indians soon went back to 
their former habits. 

There were no distinct tribes among these 
^ndians, and they had no laws. Nor was 
there a king or chief over many natives. 
They lived in small villages or rancherias, each 
having a name and ruled by a captain. Each 



ABOUT CALIFORNIA'S INDIANS 161 

rancheria had its special place to hunt or fish, 
and had to fight its own battles with the 
other families of Indians. 

Tlie men did nothing but hunt and fish, or 
make bows, stone arrow-heads, nets and traps 
for game. The women not only had to gather 
grass seeds, acorns, and nuts or berries, but 
they had to do all the field-work and carry the 
heavy burdens, usually with a baby strapped 
in its basket above the load. In preparing 
food for cooking, these mahalas, or squaws, put 
seed or acorns in a stone mortar and pounded 
them to coarse meal or paste. Sometimes a 
grass-woven basket was filled with water, and 
hot stones were thrown in till the water began 
to boil. Then acorn or seed meal was put in 
and cooked into mush. This meal, or that 
from wild oats, was also mixed into a dough 
and baked on hot stones into bread. Game or 
fish was eaten raw, or broiled a little on the 
coals of the camp-fire. 

The Indians got many deer, and one way 



162 ABOUT CALIFORNIA'S INDIANS 

of hunting them was to put the head and hide 
of a deer over the hunter's head. The make- 
beheve then crept along in the high grass till 
near enough to the quietly feeding animals to 
put an arrow through one or more. All the 
streams were full of fish then, and salmon 
swarmed in rivers that ran to the ocean. 
These salmon the Indians speared or shot with 
arrows. They also built runways or fish-weirs 
and made them so that the fish would become 
crowded into a narrow passage, and could 
easily be dipped out with nets or baskets. 

When the Americans came here they called 
these Indians " Diggers," because they lived on 
what they could dig or root out of the ground. 
They were very fond of grasshoppers, and ate 
them either dried or raw, or made into a soup 
with acorn or nut-meal. Fat grubworms and 
the flesh of any animal found dead was a 
great treat. If a whale or sea-lion was washed 
ashore on the beach, the Indians gathered round 
it for ^ fea^t, and soon left only the bones. 



ABOUT CALIFORNIA'S INDIANS 163 

But they had no idea of saving food, so they 
fattened when there was plenty, and starved 
when dry years made the acorns or nuts 
scarce. Having no salt, they did not try to 
dry or smoke the meat of deer or other wild 
animals. Nor did they at first lay up nuts 
and seeds, as even the squirrels or woodpeckers 
do, for winter use. But wandering from place 
to place, they camped in the summer along the 
rivers, where fish was plenty and the wild oats 
gave them grain. In the fall they hunted 
pine-nuts and berries in the mountains, till 
snow drove them down into the valleys. 

Each Indian town, or rancheria, had a name, 
and many of these names are still in use. At 
the north lived the Klamaths, Siskiyous, 
Shastas, and the savage Modocs, whose months 
of fighting in the lava beds caused the death 
of General Canby and many soldiers. The 
Pomo tribes of Lake county, Yrekas, Hoopas, 
and Ukiahs, are well known at the present 
day. Tehama, Colusa, Tuolumne, Yosemite, 



164 ABOUT CALIFORNIA'S INDIANS 

and other places recall the Indians who gave 
each its name. The San Diego Indians are 
still known as Dieguenos and live on a 
reserve, or lands set aside for them. 

Almost all the natives had Indian money, 
called wampum, which they made from aba- 
lone or clam-shells by cutting out round 
pieces like buttons or small, hollow beads. 
Little shells were also used, and the wampum 
was strung on grass or on deer sinews. The 
Pomos still make thousands of pieces of this 
money, and so many strings of it will buy 
whatever the buck, or Indian man, and his 
mahala, or squaw, wish to get. 

General Bidwell, who came to California in 
1841 and surveyed the land for many ranches, 
says of the Indians at that time : — 

"They were almost as wild as deer, and 
wore no clothes at all except the women, who 
had tule aprons fastened to a belt round 
their waists. In the rough work of surveying 
among brush and briars I gave the men 



ABOUT CALIFORNIA'S INDIANS 165 

shoesj pantaloons, and shirts, which they would 
take off when work was done, carry home in 
their hands, and put on in time to go to 
work again. But they soon learned to sleep 
in their new things to save trouble, and 
would wear them day and night till a suit 
dropped to pieces. They were quick to do as 
the whites did, and when paid in calico and 
cloth Saturday night, by Monday they had on 
their new skirts or shirts all made up like 
ours. Yet every Indian would choose beads 
for his wages, and go almost naked and hun- 
gry till the next pay-day." 

General Bidwell treated the Indians hon- 
estly and kindly, and in return they were his 
friends and helped him much to his advan- 
tage. In 1847 he settled on the great 
Rancho Chico, and part of his land he gave 
to the Mechoopdas, as the Indian rancheria 
there was called. They worked to plant 
orchards and at all his farm-work, and he 
treated them so fairly that old men are still 



166 ABOUT CALIFORNIA'S INDIANS 

living on this ranch who as boys helped the 
general in his tree-planting and road-building. 
A whole village of these Mechoopdas live on 
the Bidwell place owning their houses, while 
Mrs. Bidwell is their best friend and helps 
them in sickness and trouble. The men work 
in the hop fields and fruit orchards, and the 
women make baskets. 

All the California Indians are basket-makers, 
and their work is so well done and so beauti- 
ful that it is much prized. The Pomos of Lake 
and Mendocino counties make especially fine 
baskets for every purpose. Indeed, the Indian 
papoose, or baby, is cradled in a basket on his 
mother's back ; he drinks and eats from cup or 
bowl-shaped baskets, and the whole family sleep 
under a great wicker tent basket thatched with 
grass or tules. All Pomo baskets are woven 
on a frame of willow shoots, and in and out 
through this the mahala draws tough grasses 
or fine tree roots dyed in different colors, and 
after the pattern she chooses. Sometimes she 



ABOUT CALIFORNIA'S INDIANS 167 

works into the baskets the quail's crest, small red 
or yellow feathers from the woodpecker, green 
from the head of the mallard duck, or beads. 
She also hangs wampum or bits of abalone 
shell on the finest ones. The storage baskets 
are four or five feet high to hold grain or 
acorns, and the baskets to fit the back and 
carry a load are like half a cone in shape, 
with straps to hold the burden in place. 
Their smaller berry baskets hold just a .quart. 
Some are water-tight and are used to cook 
mush in. Fish-traps and long narrow basket- 
traps for quail are also made out of this 
willow-work. 

On the Bidwell ranch is an old Indian 
"temescal," or sweat-house. It is an under- 
ground hut, or cave dug out of a hillside, 
with a hole in the top for smoke to reach 
the air. The Indians used to build a big fire 
in this cave and then lie round it till drip- 
ping with sweat. A cold plunge into the 
creek near by finished the bath, — Turkish, we 



168 ABOUT CALIFORNIA'S INDIANS 

call it. Nowadays the Indians use this place 
for a meeting-room and for dances. 

The older Indians still dance and rig out 
in all their finery of feathers and beads, 
though the young people are ashamed of their 
tribal customs and wish to be like the white 
folks. Some of their dances are named for a 
bird or animal, and the Indians must imitate 
by their dress and cries the animal chosen. 
In the bear dance the dancer crawls about 
the fire on all fours with a bear's skin about 
him. He wears a chain of oak-balls round 
his neck, and as he shakes his head these 
rattle like a bear's teeth snapping shut, while 
all the time he growls savagely. The feather- 
dancer, with a skirt and cap of eagles' 
feathers, will whirl on his toes like a top for 
hours, while the other Indians sing and the 
master of the dance shakes a large rattle. 

The California Indians are slowly passing 
away, and though all over the state there are 
still rancherias, the land that was once their 
very own will soon know them no more. 



THE STORY OF SAN FRANCISCO 

The Mission and Presidio of San Francisco 
were founded in 1776 by Father Palou, and 
two little settlements grew up around the 
fort and at the church. The Presidio was 
built where it is now, and ships used to 
anchor in the bay in front of it, though the 
whalers usually went to Sausalito to get 
wood from the hills and to fill their water- 
casks at a large spring. From early Mission 
times the Spanish name of Yerba Buena was 
given to that part of San Francisco's penin- 
sula between Black Point and Rincon Point. 
Ship-captains and sailors soon found out that 
the cove or bay east of Yerba Buena was 
the best and least windy place to anchor 
their vessels, and later on hundreds of ships 
found a safe harbor there. The name Yerba 

169 



170 THE STORY OF SAN FRANCISCO 

Buena, or good herb, was given on account of 
a little creeping vine with sweet-smelling 
leaves which covered the ground and is still 
found on the sand-dunes and Presidio hills. 

For many years the small settlements made 
no progress, and the rest of the peninsula 
was covered with thick woods, where the 
grizzly bear, wolf, and coyote roamed, while 
deer were plenty at the Presidio. Then in 
1835 Governor Figueroa, the Mexican ruler of 
California, directed that a new town should 
be started at Yerba Buena cove. The first 
street, called the "foundation-street," was laid 
out from Pine and Kearny streets, as they 
are called to-day, to North Beach. The first 
house was built by Captain Richardson on 
what is now Dupont Street, between Clay and 
Washington. The next year a trader named 
Jacob Leese built a store. It was finished on 
the Fourth of July, and in honor of the day 
he gave a feast and a fandango, or dance, at 
which the company danced that night and all 



THE STORY OF SAN FRANCISCO 171 

the next day. Tins was the first Fourth 
celebrated in the place. 

Two or three years later a new survey 
laid out streets between Broadway and Cali- 
fornia, Montgomery and Powell. A fresh- 
water lagoon, or lake, was near the present 
corner of Montgomery and Sacramento, and 
an Indian temescal, or sweat-house, beside it. 
The bay came up to Montgomery Street then, 
with five feet of water at Sansome, and mud- 
flats to the east. During the gold excitement 
of '49, when hundreds of ships dropped anchor 
in the bay, many sailors deserted to go to 
the mines, and some of the old vessels were 
hauled in on these mud-fiats and made into 
storehouses. All that part of the city east of 
Montgomery Street is filled or made ground, 
and when new buildings are to be started 
wooden piles or cement piers must go down 
to get a firm foundation. 

Until 1846 only about thirty families lived 
at Yerba Buena. Then a shipload of Mor- 



172 THE STORY OF SAN FRANCISCO 

men emigrants arrived and pitched their tents 
in the sand-hills. Samuel Brannan, their 
leader, printed the first newspaper, The Cali- 
fornia Star, in '47. That year also the first 
alcalde, or mayor, of the new town, Lieuten- 
ant Bartlett, appointed an engineer named 
O'Farrell to lay out more streets. He sur- 
veyed Market Street and mapped down blocks 
as far west on the sand-dunes as Taylor 
Street and to Kincon Point or South Beach. 
He gave the names of such well-known men 
as Kearny, Stockton, Larkin, Guerrero, and 
Geary to these streets. Mission Street was the 
road to the Mission Dolores, and about this 
time Bartlett ordered that the Presidio, the 
Mission, and Yerba Buena should be one town 
and should be called San Francisco. 

Then came the gold fever, and nearly every 
one left town to go to the mines. Many 
people sold all they had to get money to buy 
mining tools and food enough to live on till 
they struck gold. Men started for the mines, 



THE STORY OF SAN FRANCISCO 173 

leaving their houses and stores alone with no 
one to care for goods or furniture. 

But news of the finding of gold had 
reached other places, and soon ships from the 
Atlantic coast, Mexico, and all over the world 
began sailing into San Francisco Bay. In '49 
the first steamer, the California, arrived from 
New York, and soon five thousand people 
were in San Francisco, where most of the 
supplies for the gold-fields had to be bought. 
Many of the newcomers lived in canvas tents 
or brush-covered shanties scattered about in 
the high sand-hills or in the thick chaparral. 
Some houses were built of adobe bricks, and 
the two-story frame Parker House was 
thought to be so fine that it rented for 
fifteen thousand dollars a month. Some 
wooden houses were brought out from the 
East in numbered pieces, like children's 
blocks, to be put together here, and others 
thought to be fireproof were of iron plates 
made in the East. 



174 THE STORY OF SAN FRANCISCO 

The first public school was opened in '48, 
and in the same building church services 
were held Sundays. The first post-office was 
in a store at the corner of Washington and 
Montgomery streets in '49. By 1850 the 
city had five square miles of land that had 
been cut down from sand-hills or filled in on 
the mud-flats. The houses along the city- 
front were built on piles, and the tide ebbed 
and flowed under them. Long wharves for 
the unloading of ships ran out into deep 
water. At Jackson and Battery streets a 
ship was used for a storehouse, and after the 
earth was filled in this stranded vessel was 
left standing among the houses. On Clay 
and Sansome streets the old hulk Niantic had 
a hotel upon her decks, and the first city 
prison was in the hold of the brig Euphemia, 

While most of the miners were steady, 
hard-working men, honest, and very kind and 
generous to each other, some drank and gam- 
bled their hard-earned gold-dust away with a 



THE STORY OF SAN FRANCISCO 175 

set of men who were ready to do any wrong 
thing for money. The gamblers and bad 
characters grew so troublesome by '51 that 
the police could do little or nothing with 
them. Every day some one was robbed, or 
murdered, and thieves often set fire to houses 
that they might plunder. As the judges and 
police could not control these criminals, nearly 
two hundred good citizens formed a "vigi- 
lance committee." It was agreed that bad 
characters should be told to leave town, and 
that robbers and murderers should be pun- 
ished by the committee. Not long after, the 
vigilance committee hanged four men, and 
roughs and law-breakers left town for the 
mines. Men soon learned to keep the laws 
and do right. 

Since almost all the houses in San Francisco 
were light frames of wood covered with cloth 
or paper, and since there was no fire depart- 
ment, there were six great fires, each of which 
nearly burnt up the town. The only way to 



176 THE STORY OF SAN FRANCISCO 

stop the flames was to pull down houses or 
to blow them up with gunpowder. But al- 
most before the ashes of one fire had cooled, 
wooden, cloth and paper buildings would 
cover whole blocks, to be burned again 
before long. The fifth great fire, in '51, 
destroyed a thousand houses and ten million 
dollars' worth of property in a night. One 
warehouse containing many barrels of vinegar 
was saved by covering the roof with blankets 
dipped in the vinegar, as no water could be 
had. The iron houses that had been thought 
fire-proof were of no use. Men who stayed in 
them found too late that the iron doors 
swelled with the heat and could not be opened, 
so that those within were smothered to death. 
Then people began to guard against such 
fires by building new houses of stone or of 
brick. The sixth great fire destroyed most 
of the wooden buildings in the business part 
of the city. After that, with two or three 
fire companies and engines and better houses. 




Seal Rocks, San Francisco. 




The New Cliff House, San Francisco. 



THE STORY OF SAN FRANCISCO 177 

people no longer dreaded the fire-bell. Water 
was piped into the city from Mountain Lake, 
and there was plenty for all purposes. 

So the city grew larger, until in '53 there 
were fifty thousand people of all races and 
countries who called San Francisco home. 
Chinese and Japanese, the Mexican, African, 
Pacific Islander, Greek, or Turk, or Malay 
elbowed crowds of Americans, English, French, 
and Germans. It was said that any foreigner 
could find in the city those who spoke his lan- 
guage, and that gold was a word all knew. 

The largest yield of gold from the mines 
was in '53, and the next year was a poor year 
for the miners. They bought fewer goods in 
San Francisco, and the storekeepers found 
business falling off. Too many houses had 
been built, so rents went down and times were 
hard for a year or two. In '55 there were 
many bank failures, and business troubles of 
all kinds made the people restless, and roughs 
and murderers carried a strong hand. Then 



178 THE STORY OF SAN FRANCISCO 

the "law and order party," as the vigilance 
committee was at that time called, began once 
more the task of punishing those who robbed 
or killed. A list of criminal offenders was 
made out, and such were sent away from the 
state. One excellent result of the vigilance 
committee's labors was that a "people's party," 
as it was called, chose the best men to govern 
the city, and for years after peace and order 
were in San Francisco. 

In '54 the city was lighted with gas for 
the first time, at a cost of fifteen dollars a 
thousand feet. In that year also the mint 
began to coin money from gold-dust, mak- 
ing ^ve, ten and twenty-dollar pieces. Lone 
Mountain Cemetery was laid out about this 
time, and the old Yerba Buena graveyard, 
where the City Hall now stands, was closed. 

San Francisco had, for some years, trouble 
about titles to property, owing to false or defec- 
tive land-grants given by the Mexicans. Men 
tried to take possession of lots they had no 



THE STORY OF SAN FRANCISCO 179 

real claim to by building a shanty on the 
ground and squatting there, and the "squatter 
troubles " between such land thieves and the 
rightful owners caused lawsuits and shooting 
affairs. A land commission finally settled these 
disputes, throwing out all the false claims and 
giving titles to the proper persons. 

The little village of Yerba Buena has now 
grown to be the largest city on the Pacific 
coast and one that is known the world over. 
It is widely and justly celebrated as the centre 
of great manufacturing and shipping interests, 
for its fine buildings, its climate, and its beau- 
tiful surroundings. San Francisco Bay, the 
harbor the Franciscans named for their patron 
saint, is noted for its picturesque scenery. 
Golden Gate Park, with its thousand acres 
of trees and lawn and flowers stretching out 
to the Pacific Ocean, the famous Cliff House, 
and the Golden Gate, through which so many 
Argonauts sailed into California, are the most 
attractive and best-known places. 



MEN CALIFORNIA REMEMBERS 

Many pages of this book might be filled 
with California's roll of honor, — with that long 
list of men whose names are remembered 
whenever the state's history is recalled. 

Explorers, Mission-builders, Argonauts, and 
pioneers were the men who helped to make 
California the fair state you know and live in. 
From the first day of the Spanish discoveries 
on this shore of the Pacific Ocean, we find brave 
and great men who gave their best efforts, and 
sometimes their lives, for California. 

Let us head our brief list with Cortes, the 
name-giver, who dreamed long years of the 
golden land he was never to see. Then Cabrillo, 
the sea-king whom San Diego people honor 
every year because he found their bay and 
first set foot on California's ground. 

180 



MEN CALIFORNIA REMEMBERS 181 

Next comes the bold Englishman, Sir Admiral 
Francis Drake, who intended that his queen, 
Elizabeth, should have this Indian kingdom, as 
he believed it to be. The stone Prayer-book 
Cross, in Golden Gate Park, was put up to 
commemorate the service of prayer and psalms, 
offered at Drake's Bay by Fletcher, the minister 
on the Admiral's ship. 

Good Father Serra, the founder of the Mis- 
sions, his friend and brother-priest Father Palou 
of San Francisco, and their fellow-laborers 
Crespi and Lasuen, helped in the work of build- 
ing churches and teaching the Indians. Gov- 
ernor Portola, the first Spanish ruler of Alta 
California, assisted the Padres, and also found 
San Francisco Bay. Lieutenant Ayala, how- 
ever, sailed the first ship, the San Carlos, 
through the Golden Gate. Another governor, 
de Neve, founded San Jose and Los Angeles, 
and wrote a set of laws for the two Californias 
of his time. That wise ruler. Governor Borica, 
ordered schools opened and tried to get the 



182 MEN CALIFORNIA REMEMBERS 

Indians to farm their lands and to raise hemp 
and flax. 

Many of the old Spanish settlers and ex- 
plorers have left us their names, though they 
are themselves forgotten, as Martinez, Amador, 
Castro, Bodega, and countless others plainly 
show. The Englishmen Livermore, Gilroy 
and Mark West, those early settlers. Temple 
and Rice at Los Angeles, Yount and Pope of 
Napa Valley, Don Timoteo Murphy of San 
Rafael, and Lassen the Dane, for whom Las- 
sen's Peak was named, were among those who 
came here before 1830. 

Governor Figueroa, called the "benefactor 
of Alta California " ordered the Missions to be 
given up to the Indians. By directing that the 
town of Yerba Buena should be laid out, he also 
is remembered as the founder of San Francisco. 
Richardson, who carried out the governor's 
orders, was the first settler and Leese built 
the first frame-house of San Francisco. 

In Governor Alvarado's time many Americans 



MEN CALIFORNIA REMEMBERS 183 

came to the new country, although Alvarado 
and General Vallejo tried hard to keep them 
out. Vallejo was then the military commander, 
and had headquarters at Sonoma, where he 
had an adobe fort and a few soldiers to protect 
the Mission of Solano. Here General Vallejo 
was living with his Indian and Californian 
settlers when the place was taken by Ide, 
the leader of the " bear-flag party." Vallejo, 
set free when the short-lived "bear-flag re- 
public " went to pieces, lived many years at 
Sonoma. He was afterwards a member of the 
first legislature. He tried hard in 1851 to 
have the state capital at Vallejo ; but he failed, 
for he did not keep his agreement to put up 
buildings for government use. 

A man well known in the early days was 
John Sutter, a Swiss, who built a fort and 
settled where Sacramento now stands. He 
called his colony New Helvetia, and soon had 
about three hundred Indians at work for him. 
Some of the men were carpenters, black- 



184 MEN CALIFORNIA REMEMBERS 

smiths, and farmers, while the women wove 
blankets or a coarse cloth. His fort enclosed 
about an acre of ground, with an adobe wall 
twenty feet high. A large gate was shut 
every night to keep safe those inside this 
walled fort. You have read that Marshall, 
who found gold, was building a sawmill for 
Sutter when he picked up the precious yellow 
nuggets. Sutter and Marshall quarrelled at 
last about the ownership of the mill at 
Coloma, where the pieces of gold were picked 
up. Marshall died a poor man, unhappy and 
neglected by the state, which has since put a 
costly bronze statue over his grave. 

Sutter was very active in the Micheltorena 
war, when Governor Micheltorena was defeated 
and put out of office by Alvarado and Castro. 

The last of the Mexican governors, Pio 
Pico, tried his best to prevent the rush of 
Americans into his country, but though Cas- 
tro, the military commander, helped him, the 
Americans came and stayed. And both Pico 



MEN CALIFORNIA REMEMBERS 185 

and Castro with their soldiers were driven out 
of California at last by Fremont and Stockton. 
General Fremont, the "path-finder/' who 
could easily find the best way through a wil- 
derness and could make maps or roads for 
others to follow him, is a striking figure in 
California history. He made three exploring 
trips to this coast, Kit Carson, the famous 
hunter and trapper, being his guide and scout. 
From the Oregon line to San Diego, Fremont 
knew the country. He was a brave Indian 
fighter and helped to capture California from 
Mexico. Fremont was appointed governor of 
the new territory by Stockton, and was the 
first senator from California representing the 
state in Congress. In 1848 Fremont sent a 
map of the country to Congress, and on it 
named the strait at the entrance to San Fran- 
cisco Bay the Golden Gate. He was, there- 
fore, the first to use this beautiful name now 
known the world over. His wife, Jessie Ben- 
ton Fremont, is still living in Los Angeles. 



186 MEN CALIFORNIA REMEMBERS 

Commodore Sloat, who raised the American 
flag at Monterey, and Commodore Stockton 
were United States naval officers who helped 
to conquer the Mexican and Indian forces 
with the aid of Fremont and General Kearny. 
These fom^ men won the land of gold for the 
Union. 

General John Bidwell, another "path-finder," 
who in 1841 led the first party of white men 
over the Sierras, lived to be over eighty years 
of age. He saw the state, once a wilderness 
where naked Digger Indians chased elk and 
antelope, grow to a pleasant land of orchards 
and vineyards, of great cities full of people. 
General Bid well was for a time in Sutter's 
employ, and surveyed nearly all the large 
ranches and the roads in early days. All his 
life he planted trees and built roads, and at 
his great Rancho Chico is one of the largest 
orchards in the state. Part of his life-work 
was to help a tribe of savage Indians to be 
good American citizens, and as one of the 



MEN CALIFORNIA REMEMBERS 187 

fathers of California he should always be 
remembered. 

Many notable names appear in the days 
when the finding of gold brought this shore 
of the Pacific Ocean before the eyes of the 
world. Among these are Gwin, who was 
chosen senator with Fremont; Larkin, widely 
known as the first and last American Consul 
to California and for his accounts of the gold 
discovery; and Halleck, first secretary of the 
state and afterward General Halleck. 

The streets of San Francisco honor some of 
the citizens of 1848 and 1849 : Geary, the 
first postmaster; Leavenworth and Hyde, the 
first alcaldes or mayors ; Van Ness, Broderick, 
Turk, and McAllister, recalling prominent men 
of those days. Spanish families like Sanchez, 
Castro, Noe, Bernal, and Guerrero had also a 
place on the city map. Indeed, every town 
has some native Californian names in and 
around it. 

Don Victor Castro, said to be the first 



188 MEN 'CALIFOKNIA REMEMBERS 

white child born in San Francisco, died lately 
at San Pablo in the house he had built sixty 
years ago. He was called the last of the 
Spanish grandees, those dons who, before the 
Gringos came, had estates that stretched miles 
away on every hand, and thousands of cattle 
with many Indian servants. Don Victor built 
and ran the first ferry across San Francisco 
Bay. 

Sacramento was laid out as a town for 
Sutter by three lieutenants of the U. S. army : 
Warner, who was afterwards killed by Indians ; 
Ord, who was a general in the Civil War, while 
the third, in after years "marched through 
Georgia " as General Sherman. Marys ville 
was also laid out by Sutter, and Stockton by 
Weber, who owned all the land around it. 

In 1849 Doctor Gregg and his party 
found Humboldt Bay. In 1851 Yosemite 
Valley was discovered by Major Savage and 
a company of soldiers, who were out hunting 
hostile Indians. This band of Indians was 



MEN CALIFORNIA REMEMBERS 189 

called the Yosemites, and their old chief's 
name was Tenaya, for whom the beautiful 
lake is named. 

Those who came to California before 1850 
were called pioneers, and many of them built 
up great fortunes. Among them were Cole- 
man, the president of the vigilance §om- 
mittee, Sharon, Flood, Fair, O'Brien, Tevis, 
Phelan, and James Lick. Lick was a remark- 
able man, who gave away an immense fortune ; 
building the Lick Observatory, a school of 
mechanical arts, free public baths, an old 
ladies' home, and giving a million to the 
Academy of Science and the Society of 
California Pioneers. 

In later days the names crowd thickly 
upon each other. Among editors and literary 
men the fearless and ill-fated James King 
of the Evening Bulletin^ J. Ross Browne, the 
reporter of the first convention and a most 
interesting writer, Derby the humorist, " Cax- 
ton" or W. H. Rhodes, Mark Twam, Bret 



190 MEN CALIFORNIA REMEMBERS 

Harte, the historians Hittell and Bancroft, 
and the poet Joaquin Miller may be noted. 

The governors of the state have been men 
remarkable as brilliant speakers or lawyers 
and as wise rulers. In 1875, during the time 
of Pacheco, the first native-born governor, the 
order of " Native Sons of the Golden West " 
was formed, which now numbers over ten 
thousand young California men. The "Native 
Daughters," a sister society, follows also the 
idea of keeping the love of California warm 
in the hearts of her children. 




Fallen Leaf Lake. 



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Mount Shasta from Strawberry Valley. 



OUR GLORIOUS CLIMATE 

Not only a glorious but in many ways a 
wonderful climate is enjoyed by the people 
of California's sea-coast and mountains, her 
valleys and foot-hills. In no other state can 
one find so many kinds of weather in such 
short distances. For instance, in Southern 
California you may pick flowers and oranges 
in almost tropical gardens, and in an hour 
find winter and throw snowballs on the 
high mountains overlooking the roses and 
orange groves you so lately left. 

Only in the mountains, along that granite 
backbone of the state known as the Sierra 
Nevadas, are there four seasons, the spring, 
summer, autumn, and winter common to most 
of the United States. So the Sierras have a 
distinct climate of their own. The Sacra- 

191 



192 OUR GLORIOUS CLIMATE 

mento and San Joaquin river valleys have 
another climate peculiar to themselves, while 
south of latitude 35° the coast has less rain 
and is warmer than the coast counties north 
of that line. 

In the greater part of the state the year 
is divided into a dry summer and a wet 
winter. The rains begin in October, and the 
first showers fall on dry, brown hills and 
dusty fields baked hard by steady sunshine 
since May. After these showers the grass 
springs up, and the fields are green almost 
as quickly as if some fairy godmother had 
waved her wand. An army of wild flowers, 
whose seeds were hidden in the brown earth, 
wakes when the rain-drops patter, and the 
plants get ready to bloom in a month or 
so. For this season, from November to Feb- 
ruary, with little frost and no ice nor snow, 
is winter in name only. Roses and violets 
bloom in the gardens and yellow poppies on 
the hills. 



OUR GLORIOUS CLIMATE 193 

People expect and hope for much rain in 
this so-called winter, since a wet year assures 
good crops to the state. But the amount 
of rain that falls is very uncertain. It does 
not rain every day, nor all day, as a rule, 
and each storm seems different. Sometimes 
a " southeaster " blows up from the Japan 
Current, or Black Stream, as the Japanese 
call the warm, dark-blue waters that pour out 
of the China Sea. This current of the Pacific 
Ocean flows along our coast in a mighty river 
a thousand miles wide, and gives California 
its peculiar climate of cool summers and moist, 
warm winters. The southeasterly wind ruffles 
the bay with white-capped waves and dashes 
sheets of rain against window and roof. 
Then the wind changes, and all the clouds 
go flying to north or east, while from the 
clear blue sky brilliant sunshine pours down 
to make the grass and flowers grow. During 
the winter months the sun is strong and warm 
enough to make out-door life delightful. 



194 OUR GLORIOUS CLIMATE 

The farmer depends greatly upon the rain- 
fall. In a wet winter the moisture sinks 
far into the ground, but not so deep that the 
thirsty little roots cannot find it in the 
summer. Early rains are needed to soften 
the ground for November ploughing, and 
young grain and crops of all kinds need 
rain through April. In the northern part 
of the state the wet season begins earlier 
and lasts longer than in the south, while 
the southeastern corner is an almost rainless 
desert. 

In San Francisco the thermometer seldom 
falls below 45° in the winter, the average 
for the season being 51°. Perhaps in Janu- 
ary or February the sidewalks may be 
white with frost in the mornings, or hail 
may fall during some cold rain-storm. Once 
in five years or so, enough snow falls to 
make children go wild with delight over a 
few snowballs which are very soon melted. 
People can be comfortable the year round 



OUR GLORIOUS CLIMATE 195 

without fires, and the clear, bright winter 
days with soft air and warm sunshine are 
always pleasant enough to spend outdoors. 
This ocean climate, due to the warm sea air, 
is enjoyed by the counties facing the coast 
and San Francisco Bay. In the valleys of 
the interior white frosts are frequent, and 
thin ice forms on the wayside puddles. Once 
in a while killing frosts destroy fruit blos- 
soms and cut down the garden flowers and 
vegetables, but seldom do more damage. 

In mountain regions, above five or six thou- 
sand feet, the very cold winter lasts six or seven 
months. Snow falls almost constantly and 
drifts to a great depth. Small lakes are frozen 
and buried in snow, and the trees are bent and 
weighed down with ice and sleet. Many of the 
wild animals come down to the foot-hills below 
the snow-line to spend the winter ; but the bear 
curls himself up in his warm cave and sleeps 
through the cold months. In this snowy zone 
of the Sierras, about thirty miles wide, winter 



196 OUR GLORIOUS CLIMATE 

lasts from the first snowfall, about the end of 
October, to the late spring of June. Then July 
and August are months of glorious weather, 
with clear, dry air and a cloudless sky. Dur- 
ing the day the temperature of about 80° melts 
much snow, and the rivers carry it away in 
rushing torrents and falls of icy water. In 
September the frost turns the leaves of all but 
the evergreen trees beautiful colors of red and 
yellow. Indian summer comes during Septem- 
ber and October, when the days are sunny and 
warm, and then the long winter sets in again. 
Peaks above eight thousand feet are snow-clad 
on their crests and along their sides by deep 
drifts the year round. 

Along the Pacific coast in summer cool sea- 
winds, called trade-winds, blow in from the 
ocean, and 60° is the average temperature. The 
farther you go inland from the coast, the hot- 
ter it gets, and the heat is very great in the 
interior of the state. In the San Joaquin and 
Sacramento valleys it is often over 100° in 



OUR GLORIOUS CLIMATE 197 

the shade, though this dry heat is not hard to 
bear, and the nights are always cool enough 
for one to sleep in comfort. 

Summer fogs are usual in the coast counties. 
The mornings are pleasant and sunny till about 
eleven o'clock. At this time the sun's rays 
grow stronger in the interior valleys, and the 
hot air rises while trade-winds rush in from 
the cold ocean and fog settles down like a 
thick, gray cloud over the bay and hills. July 
and August are cold and foggy along the coast- 
line, with strong west winds almost every day. 
In September the winds die away, and some- 
times a shower or two falls. 

The rainless desert, or southeastern corner 
of our state, is the hottest region of all. Here 
the sun glares down till sand and rocks seem 
heated by a fiery furnace. Every living crea- 
ture gasps and pants for breath in the scorch- 
ing heat. There are no trees, but only cactus, 
that queer, prickly, thorny plant, often fifteen 
or twenty feet high in these wastes of sand. 



198 OUR GLORIOUS CLIMATE 

and low greasewood bushes. Under this vege- 
tation snakes, lizards, and horned toads bask all 
day and search for food at night. If travellers 
wander from the road in crossing the desert, 
they are easily lost, and sometimes they die or 
go mad in the terrible heat. There are no 
springs, and water stations are a long way 
apart, so that lost people usually die of thirst. 
As the heat of the sun's rays quivers over the 
burning sands, a curious sight called a mirage 
is often produced. A cool, glassy lake or flow- 
ing river bordered with green trees seems pic- 
tured in the air, and the hot and weary traveller 
can scarcely believe that only sand and rocks 
are before him. 

Can you tell which season you like the best ? 
You will find the one you choose in some part 
of this favored state. It is always summer in 
the south, and you may slide on the ice or 
throw snowballs all year in the high Sierras. 



SOME WONDERFUL SIGHTS 

California is a wonderland where snowy 
mountains, mighty and ancient • forests, glaciers 
and geysers, lakes and waterfalls, foaming 
rivers and the cliffs and rolling surf down her 
long sea-coast give new and beautiful pictures 
at every place. 

Through the whole state stretches the granite 
backbone of the Sierra Nevadas with its high- 
est crest or ridge at the head-waters of the 
Kings and Kern rivers near Fresno. Here 
Mount Whitney and a dozen other great peaks 
of the High Sierras or California Alps lift their 
heads over thirteen thousand feet in the air. 
Here are to be seen most magnificent pano- 
ramas of lofty peaks, deep canons, towering 
domes, and snow-clad summits. The finest 
forests, too, in the world grow on the slopes 

199 



200 SOME WONDERFUL SIGHTS 

of the Sierras, the immense pines and giant 
sequoias of the General Grant and other 
National Parks in this section being the larg- 
est and oldest of all. Kings River Canon is 
a rugged gorge half a mile deep with the 
river rushing through it in thundering rapids 
and cascades. - 

The well-known Yosemite Valley is the gorge 
of the Merced River and, though only eight miles 
long and half a mile wide, holds the grandest 
of all our mountain scenery. The mighty 
rock El Capitan, over three thousand feet in 
height, stands at the entrance to the valley, 
and across from it is Bridal Veil Fall, a snowy 
cascade so thin you can see the face of the 
mountain through the falling waters. There 
are many waterfalls, but the Yosemite is chief 
of them all. Here the river takes a plunge 
of sixteen hundred feet, the water falling like 
snowy rockets bursting into spray from that 
great height. 

Then, for six hundred feet more, the torrent 



SOME WONDERFUL SIGHTS 201 

leaps and foams through a trench it has cut 
out of the sohd rock to the cliff, from which 
it takes a second plunge. This Lower Yosem- 
ite fall is four hundred feet high, the rushing 
waters turning into clouds of spray, which the 
wind tosses from side to side. At Nevada Fall 
the Merced River leaps six hundred feet at a 
bound, strikes a mass of rocks halfway down, 
and breaks into white foam upon which rain- 
bows play when the sun shines through the 
misty veil. 

Besides the grand Sentinel Rock, Eagle Peak, 
Clouds' Rest, and other high mountains in the 
Yosemite Valley, many domes or round-topped 
peaks like the heads of buried giants loom up, 
the most famous being South Dome, Wash- 
ington Column, Liberty Cap, and Mount Brod- 
erick. 

But no one can picture this wonderful valley 
with pen or brush or camera and give its real 
charm. You must see it yourself to know and 
understand the beauty of great mountains and 



202 SOME WONDERFUL SIGHTS 

falling waters, of Mirror Lake with its fine 
reflections of the surrounding scenery, and of 
the rushing torrent of the Merced River in its 
swift coursing through this mighty canon of 
the Yosemite. Thousands of tourists and sight- 
seers visit the valley from May to October. 
Then snow begins to fall and winter sets in, 
as it does everywhere in the high Sierras. 
Very deep snow-drifts cover the ground, lakes 
and rivers freeze, and the great falls are 
fringed with icicles, while a large ice cone 
forms at the foot of the falling water. Many 
beautiful pictures may be found in the valley 
in winter when Jack Frost is ruler of all the 
snow-clad, ice-bound canon. 

Scattered throughout the Sierras are other 
valleys almost as fine as the Yosemite. 
These are not often reached by the army of 
summer sight-seers, but true mountaineers 
find them. One valley which has fine scenery 
is the Grand Canon of the Tuolumne, the 
gorge being twenty-five miles long, with walls 



SOME WONDERFUL SIGHTS 203 

SO high and steep that once entered one must 
go through to the end. The Tuohnnne River 
rushes, with terrible force and speed, in cas- 
cades and rapids down the granite stairway 
which is the floor of this canon. The walls 
of the gorge rise so high that the traveller 
only sees a tiny strip of blue sky far above 
him, and the great pine trees on top of these 
cliff walls seem only the length of one's 
finger. 

It is supposed that all these valleys have 
been formed by glaciers, which during the ice 
age, thousands of years ago, filled the canons 
and swept over the mountains. These masses 
of ice, moving very slowly, ground and tore 
up the rocks under and around them till deep 
gorges and steep, high cliffs were left in their 
tracks. Most of the glaciers melted long ago, 
but on Mount Lyell, on Shasta, and a few 
of the Sierra summits may still be found those 
ever-living ice-rivers, the one on Mount Lyell 
being the source of the Tuolumne River. 



204 SOME WONDERFUL SIGHTS 

California is rich in lakes, especially in the 
mountains where the melting snows gather in 
every hollow and form lakelets in chains or 
groups, or in one large body of water like 
Tahoe, Donner, or Tenaya lakes. 

One of the most beautiful lakes in the 
world is Lake Tahoe. It is six thousand feet 
above sea-level, and the mountains aroimd it 
rise four thousand feet higher. On these 
peaks snow-drifts lie the year round above the 
" snow-line," as a height over eight or nine 
thousand feet is called. Nevada, treeless and 
barren, is on the eastern side of Lake Tahoe, 
while the western or California side is green 
and thickly wooded with beautiful pines. 
But the first thing one would notice, perhaps, 
is the wonderful clearness of the lake water. 
As one stands on the wharf the steamer 
Tahoe seems to be hanging in the clear green 
depths with her keel and twin propellers in 
plain sight. The fish dart under her and all 
about as in some large aquarium. There a 



SOME WONDERFUL SIGHTS 205 

big lake-trout shoots by like a silver streak 
of light, or here is a school of hundreds 
of little fingerlings. Every stick or stone 
shows on the bottom as one starts out on 
the steamer, and as one sails along where the 
water is sixty or seventy feet deep. In the 
middle the lake's depth is fifteen hundred 
feet and the water is a dark indigo-blue. 
At the edge and along shallow places the 
color is bright green, as at Emerald Bay, a 
beautiful inlet three miles long. Lake Tahoe 
is twenty miles in length and about five wide, 
and its icy cold waters are of crystal clearness 
and very pure. 

Fallen Leaf Lake is a smaller Tahoe, and 
Dormer Lake, not far from Truckee, and now 
the camping-place of many a summer visitor, 
is the place where years ago the Donner 
overland party spent a terrible winter in the 
Sierra snows. 

Clear Lake and the Blue Lakes in Lake 
County are delightful places to visit, and in 



206 SOME WONDERFUL SIGHTS 

this county, too, are the geysers. Some won- 
derful curiosities are seen here. You will find 
springs that spout up a stream of hot water 
every few minutes, mineral springs from which 
you can have a drink of soda water, and an 
acid spring that flows lemonade. Alum, 
iron, or sulphur waters, either hot or cold, 
bubble up out of the ground at every turn. 
At one spring you may boil an egg. Other 
springs are used for steam baths and also hot 
mud-baths. In Geyser Canon is the strange 
place every sight-seer hurries to at once. 
Such rumblings and thunderings, such hot 
vapors and gases come from the cracks in 
the ground, that the Indians thought this was 
the workshop where the bad spirit which 
white people call the devil used to live and 
work. The deeper one goes into this canon, 
the hotter and noisier it gets. All round are 
signs telling where it is dangerous to step, 
while the ground is hot, and boiling water 
runs by in little streams. Steam rises from 



SOME WONDERFUL SIGHTS 207 

many pools, and the sulphur smell almost 
chokes one. Another curious spring, called the 
devil's inkstand, seems full of ink. Mount St. 
Helena, near here, is a dead or extinct vol- 
cano, and probably there are fires in the 
earth under this region which keep up these 
steam and sulphur springs. 

Many of the Sierra summits are capped 
with volcanic rock, and Lassen's Peak and 
Mount Shasta are extinct volcanoes. There 
are hot springs and cracks from which steam 
and sulphur rise on both of these mountains, 
and as earthquakes often shake the earth in 
different parts of the state we know that 
underground fires are still at work. A great 
piece of land on Mount San Jacinto in South- 
ern California lately sank down about a hun- 
dred feet, and cracks both deep and wide 
show that some force from below gave a 
thorough shaking-up to that part of the state. 

Mono, Owen's, and several other large lakes 
are the " sinks " into which rivers flow and 



208 SOME WONDERFUL vSIGHTS 

lose themselves in the sandy or marshy 
shores. These lakes have soda or salt in 
their waters, and great stretches of dry alkali 
lands around them. The famous Death Valley 
is a dry lake of this kind where the sun 
beats down on the white alkali plain till it is 
almost certain death to try to cross it with- 
out a guide. The Salton Sea is a dry lake 
where almost pure salt is dug out, and great 
quantities of borax and of soda are found in 
other beds of dried-up streams and lakes. 

But to tell of all the curious things nature 
has to show us in California, — of the forests 
of petrified trees, of the caverns cut out of 
the ocean cliffs by restless waves, or of those 
in the mountains or the Modoc lava-beds, — 
well, you will see most of them, let us 
hope, in your vacations. A large book might 
be given to the wonderful sights of this great 
state, and it may be your fortune to visit 
and so always remember a few we have 
named. 



PRONOUNCING VOCABULARY 



Alta (al'-ta). 
Amador (am'-a-dore) . 
Alvarado (al-varra'-do). 
Ayala (a-ya'-la). 
Bernal (ber-naV). 
Bodega ( bo-da '-ga). 
Cabrillo (ka-breel'-yo). 
Calaveras (kal-a-va'-ras). 
Carmel (kar'-mel). 
Castro (kas'-tro). 
Cortes (kor'-tez). 
Coloma (ko-lo'-ma). 
Diegiieno (de-a-gwan'-yo). 
Farallones ( far '-a-lones) . 
Figueroa (fi-gwa-ro'-a). 
Franciscan (fran-cis'-can). 
Galvez (gal-ves). 
Gringos (gring'-gos). 
Guerrero (gur-ra'-ro). 
Junipero Serra (hu-nip'-er- 

ser'-ra). 
Klamath (klam'-eth). 
Los Angeles (los an'-ga-lees 
Marin (ma-rin'). 
Mariposa (mar-e-po'-sa). 
Martinez (mar-tee'-nes). 



Mechoopdas (me-choop'- 

das). 
Mission Dolores (mis'-sion 

do-lor-es). 
Modocs (mo'-docs). 
Monterey (mon-ta-ray'). 
Noe (no -a). 
Ortega (or-ta'-ga). 
Paclieco (pa-cha'-ko). 
Padres (pa'-drays). 
Palou (pa -loo). 
Pio Pico (pe'-o pe'-ko). 
Placerville (plas'-er-vil). 
Point Reyes (rays). 
Pomos (po-mos). 
Portola (por-to'-la). 
San Antonio (san an-to- 

ni-o) . 
Sanchez (san'-ches). 
San Carlos (san kar'-los). 
San Diego (san de-a'-go). 
San Fernando (san fer-nan'- 
.) do). 

San Francisco (san fran-cis'- 

co). 
San Gabriel (san ga-brell'). 
209 



210 



PRONOUNCING VOCABULARY 



San Jacinto (san ha-sin'- 

to). 
San Joaquin (san waw- 

keen'). 
San Jose (san ho-say'). 
San Juan Bautista (san 

wawn ba-tis'-ta). 
San Juan Capistrano (san 

wawn kap-is-tra'-no) . 
San Luis Obispo (san loo-is 

o-bis'-po). 
San Miguel (san mig-gell'). 
Santa Barbara (san'-ta bar-' 

ba-ra) . 
Santa Catalina (san'-ta kat- 

a-lee'-na). 
Santa Cruz (san'-ta krooz). 
Santa Lucia (san'-ta loo- 

she'-a). 
Santa Ysabel (san'-ta e'-sa- 

bel). 
Santa Ynez (san'-ta e'- 

nes). 
Sausalito (saw-sa-lee'-to). 
Sierras (see-er'-ras). 
Siskiyous (sis'-ke-yous). 
Sonoma (so-no'-ma). 
Sutter (sut'-ter). 
Tahoe (ta'-ho). 
Tamalpais (tarn '-el-pies) . 
Tenaya (te-ni'-ya). 
Tulare (too-lar'-ee). 
Tuolumne (too-ol'-um-ee). 
Ukiah (u-ki'-ah). 



Vallejo (val-ya'-ho). 
Viscaino (vees-ka-e'-no). 
Wawoua (wa-wo'-na). 
Yerba Buena (yer'-ba bwa'- 

na). 
Yosemite (yo sem'-e-tee). 



abalone (ab-a-lo'-nee). 

adobe (a-do'-bee). 

alcalde (al-kal'-day). 

arrastra (ar-ras'-tra). 

burro (boo'-ro). 

canon (can '-yon). 

came seca (kar'-na sa'- 

ka). 
cascarone (kas-ka-ro'-na) . 
chaparral (shap-per-ral'). 
coyote (ki-o'-tee). 
corral (kor-ral'). 
debris (day-bree'). 
el toro (el to'-ro) . 
fandango (fan-dang'-go). 
frijoles (free-yo'-lays). 
galleon (gal'-le-on). 
madrono (ma-dron'-yo). 
manzanita (man-zan-ee'-ta). 
mantilla (man-tee '-y a), 
mahala (ma-ha'-la). 
mesa (ma'-sa). 
mustangs (mus'-tangs). 
presidio (pra-se'-de-o). 
pueblos (pu-a'-blos). 
ranche (ransh). 



PRONOUNCING VOCABULARY 



211 



rancheria (ran-sha-ree'-a). 
rodeos (ro-da'-os). 
senora (san-yo'-ra). 
senoritas (san-yor-ee -tas) . 
sombrero (som-bra'-ro). 
sequoias ( see-kwoy '-as ) . 



serape (ser-ii'-pay). 
teredo (te-re'-do). 
temescal (tem-es-kal'). 
tortillas (tor-tee'-yas). 
tule (too'-lee). 
vaqueros (va-ka'-ros). 



HISTORY READER 

For Elementary Schools 

Arranged with special reference to Holidays 
By Lucy Langdon Williams Wilson, Ph.D. 



In One Volume. Illustrated. Cloth. i6mo. Price 60 cents, net. 
In Five Parts. Paper. i6nio. Each, price 20 cents, net. 



COMMENTS 

E. H. McLACHLIN, Superintendent of Schools, South Hadley Palls, Mass. 

" I like the appearance of your book very much, and the idea of presenting 
history to young children in the form of history readings is the correct way." 

CHARLES B. JENNINGS, Superintendent of Schools, New London, Conn. 

" It is admirable. When I next purchase books for supplementary read- 
ing, I shall certainly add some * Wilson's History Readers.' " 

GEORGE L. SMITH, Superintendent of Schools, Barrington, R.I. 

" I like it very much indeed, and will order some of the books for supple- 
mentary reading." 

MRS. S. E. PINGREE, Superintendent of Schools, Hartford, Vt. 

" I have examined the Reader, and think it a desirable and beautiful book, 
and shall order some for one of the schools, certainly, and possibly more." 

W. W. ANDREWS, Principal of Butler Grammar School, Portland, Me. 

" I think it is an excellent book; in fact, the best of its kind that 1 have 
ever seen." 

F. A. BRACKETT, Principal of North-East School, Hartford, Conn. 

" I am more than pleased with it. In my judgment it is by far the best 
of the books of its kind that has come to my notice. It shall be the very first 
to be put into our school for supplementary reading." 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 

CHICAGO ATLANTA BOSTON SAN FRANCISCO 

378 Wabash Ave. Empire Building 100 Boylston St. 319-325 Sansome St. 



FROM THE OLD WORLD 

TO THE NEW 

How America was Found and Settled 

By Marguerite Stockman Dickson 

Cloth. 1 2 mo. 50 cents, net 
WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS 



The book treats of the theory of discovery and colonization in America. 
It is written to appeal to children of perhaps twelve years of age; that is, to 
pupils in the sixth year of their school life. It tells the story of discovery, 
exploration, and settlement as a connected narrative, and not as a series of 
" history stories " or of biographical sketches. Its first aim is to show the 
*' why " back of each event, since the author believes that there is no surer 
way than this of making the story interesting as well as profitable to young 
readers. 

With this end in view, the children are led back to the Europe of the 
centuries preceding the " Age of Discovery," and are helped to trace the 
beginnings of the great movements " from the old world to the new." Each 
event, each person, is considered, not as an isolated subject for study, but as a 
part in a carefully developed whole. 

The book is well equipped with maps and illustrations; with reference lists 
at the end of each chapter, indicating further reading, suitable for children, 
and interesting to them; with the helps a busy teacher prizes — word lists for 
preparatory work in connection with the reading, suggestions for written work 
and other " things to do." Outlines for composition work on various subjects 
selected from each chapter are a prominent feature of this portion of the work. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 

CHICAQO ATLANTA BOSTON SAN FRANCISCO 

378 Wabash Ave. Empire Building 100 Boylston St. 319-325 Sansome St. 



